Detection of relapses after treatment for parotid gland carcinoma: the value of post treatment surveillance

Sammanfattning: Introduction: Salivary glands are exocrine organs that produce and secrete saliva into theoral cavity. Cancer in the salivary glands is a rare but fatal disease with a five- year survivalrate of 75%. Cancer in the parotid glands, the largest salivary glands, affects about 100persons every year in Sweden. Patients are offered scheduled follow- up visits for five yearsto enable detection of relapse. Relapses can also be detected at extra follow-up visits initiatedby the patients themselves. Aim: The primary aim was to determine how relapse of parotid malignancies are detected; ata scheduled follow- up visit or at visits initiated by the patients. The secondary aim was tocompare if the survival after relapse depends on how it was detected.  Methods: A retrospective cohort study including patients registered in the Head and NeckCancer Register of Örebro University Hospital. Patients with relapse were included.Information was collected from the register and the patients’ medical charts.   Results: A total of 40 patients were included. 25 relapses were found at patient-initiatedvisits, 11 at follow-up visits and 4 were detected incidentally. The two-year survival rate was56% in the group of self- initiated visits and 54.5% in the group of routine follow-up visits.Result from Log Rank test was p-value 0.565.  Conclusion: Findings suggest that it is more common to find relapses at visits initiated bypatient than at follow-up visits. There was no statistically significant difference in survivalbetween the groups.