A Comparative Study of Uninterrupted Treatment by Radiotherapy versus Standard Gap Correction after Interruptions in Oropharyngeal Cancer.

BACKGROUND: Radiation is an important modality in the treatment of cancer. The longer course of treatment, favors stem cells repopulation, increasing the bulk of stem cells that have to be obliterated. So overall treatment time increases, the chances of local cure by radiotherapy decreases. Primary aim of study is to test the efficacy of radiation treatment after standard correction in unplanned interruption. MATERIAL AND METHOD: 105 patients of head and neck cancer (Oropharynx) with ECOG performance score = 2, with squamous cell carcinoma histopathology and with stage III and IVa were enrolled and 95 patients have completed treatment. Patients were planned for Concurrent chemo-radiotherapy with Cisplatin 40mg/m2 with EBRT (66Gy/33#/2Gy/#) treatment completed in 6.5 weeks. During the treatment the patients were grouped into uninterrupted arm (48) and interrupted arm with standard correction (47). RESULTS: The enrolled patients mean age: 50 years, males 76.8%, stage IVa disease 50.7%, ECOG performance status (0/1: 67.9%). The complete response (CR) in uninterrupted arm was 64.5% and CR in interrupted arm with standard correction was 61.7% at 6 months (X2= 1.883, p value=0.169). While considering alone Stage IV cases, had found that the locally advanced cases of uninterrupted arm have significant better response (X2= 5.90, p value=0.015). The quality of life was slightly poor, but was statistically insignificant in interrupted arm. CONCLUSION: The study concludes that patients with advanced stage (i.e. IVa) have significantly poor treatment outcomes even the standard correction once treatment is interrupted. While the patient treated with gap correction also have similar outcomes in form of disease-free survival and overall survival at 3 years compared to uninterrupted arm.