Factors affecting survival in surgically salvaged locoregional recurrences of squamous cell carcinoma of the tongue

Purpose: To determine the factors affecting outcomes in surgically salvaged, locoregionally recurrent squamous cell carcinoma of the tongue (SCCT). Materials and Methods: In a retrospective cohort of patients who underwent successful salvage of locoregionally recurrent SCCT, we performed this observational analytical study to determine survival and its determinants. Details extracted from our database were patient characteristics (age, gender, tobacco use), treatment characteristics, and characteristics of recurrent disease (stage and adverse pathologic features [APFs] such as grade, perineural invasion, and lymphovascular invasion). Overall survival (OS) curves were plotted using the Kaplan-Meier method. A Cox proportional hazards model was used to determine the impact of patient, disease, and treatment characteristics on OS. Results: Of 52 patients with locoregional recurrences of surgically treated SCCT, 25 (48.1%) underwent surgical salvage with curative intent. The median overall OS for this cohort was 26 months. Factors predictive of worse OS were previous adjuvant therapy (P =.016) and increasing APFs in recurrent tumor histology (P =.008). Lymphovascular invasion in recurrent tumor histology and patients with a disease-free interval of less than 6 months showed worse survival (P =.008 and P =.058, respectively). Conclusions: Among patients with locoregional recurrence, the number who are eligible for curative-intent surgical salvage is small. Those who received previous adjuvant therapy and those with increasing APFs in recurrent tumors had poor outcomes despite attempts at surgical salvage, particularly patients with early recurrence.