Optimal Therapy Discovered for Vocal Cord Cancer

The results of a major study comparing radiotherapy treatment options for vocal cord cancer indicate new optimal radiation treatment therapies for the disease.

Current treatment options for Early-Stage Glottic Cancer (ESGC) include both Conventionally-Fractionated Radiotherapy (CFX), and HypoFractionated Radiotherapy (HFX).

The study was published in the April 26, 2017, issue of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute by researchers from the Yale Cancer Center. The researchers used clinical data from a large national database in the US, from the period 2004 to 2013, for the study. The study group consisted of 10,212 patients diagnosed with stage 1 or 2 glottic cancer. Most of the patients, 6,182 (60.5%) in number, were treated with CFX. The rest, 4030 patients (39.5%) were treated with HFX.

The results of the study show that for patients treated with definitive radiotherapy for ESGC cancer, HFX radiotherapy treatment resulted in improved survival compared to CFX radiotherapy treatment. This was especially the case for patients with stage 2 ESGC.

Lead author of the study, Assistant Professor Zain A. Husain, MD, said, “This is an important finding as the optimal fractionation for early stage glottic cancer has long been an area of controversy. These results strongly support hypofractionation as a preferred treatment approach. It is also reassuring to that our results show the utilization of hypofractionation has been increasing considerably.”