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Head and neck carcinoma in the United States
Cancer, 05/09/2012
Ang KK et al. – Longitudinal Oncology Registry of Head and Neck Carcinoma (LORHAN) documented differences in patient characteristics and treatments between community and academic settings for a large series of patients in the United States.
Methods- Patients aged ≥18years were enrolled in the Longitudinal Oncology Registry of Head and Neck Carcinoma (LORHAN) after providing written informed consent if they had a confirmed diagnosis of new HNC and were scheduled to receive treatment other than surgery alone.
- Between 2005 and 2010, 100 centers enrolled 4243 patients, including 2612 patients (62%) from academic investigators and 1631 patients (38%) from community centers.
- Initial treatments were radiation with concurrent chemotherapy (30%) or cetuximab (9%), adjuvant radiotherapy (21%), induction chemotherapy (16%), and other (24%).
- Intensity modulated radiation therapy was the dominant radiation technique (84%).
- Single-agent cisplatin was prescribed in nearly half of patients and more often in academic centers (53% vs 43% of patients; P<.0001).
- Single-agent cetuximab was the next most common drug used (19%) and was prescribed more frequently in community settings (24% vs 17%; P=.0001).
- The data rejected the 2 prospective hypotheses.
