Endocrine Abstracts

Introduction

Association between diabetes mellitus and cancer outcomes has been demonstrated in several cancer sites. Data for upper aerodigestive tract carcinoma are limited. Our aim is to study the impact of diabetes mellitus on survival in upper aerodigestive tract squamous cell carcinoma.

Material and methods

A retrospective study of 130 patients treated for upper aerodigestive tract squamous cell carcinoma, between 1992 and 2019. Nasopharyngeal, nasal cavity and paranasal sinus carcinomas are excluded. We used the Kaplan–Meier method to calculate the cumulative proportion surviving. Survival curves were compared by log-rank test (P < 00.05 for statistical significance). We used the Cox regression model for multivariate analysis.

Results

Our study included 117 men and 13 women. The mean age was 59.8 years. The tumour sites were: larynx (100 cases), hypopharynx (20 cases), tongue (9 cases) and lip (1 case). Twenty-nine patients (22.3%) had type 2 diabetes mellitus. No patient had type 1 diabetes mellitus. Five-year overall survival was 62.1% for nondiabetic group compared with 55.4% for diabetic group. There was no statistically significant difference between the 2 groups (P = 0.77). Five-year disease-free survival was 60.8% for nondiabetic group compared with 54.7% for diabetic group, without significant difference (P = 0.63). Multivariate analysis of overall and disease-free survival did not demonstrate a statistically significant difference between the diabetic and nondiabetic groups (P = 0.2 for overall survival and P = 0.7 for disease-free survival).

Conclusion

The impact of diabetes on survival in upper aerodigestive tract squamous cell carcinoma is controversial in the literature. Our results demonstrate that there was not significantly poorer overall or disease-free survival in type 2 diabetes mellitus patients. This may provide guidance for the multidisciplinary team that treats diabetic patients with head and neck cancer.