Local Recurrence and Survival in Patients with Adenoid Cystic Carcinoma of Head and Neck

Adenoid cystic carcinomas is a rare tumor occurring in major salivary glands. Despite definitive treatment, these aggressive cancers often recur and metastasize with no known effective chemotherapy regimen. The present study aimed to evaluate the recurrence and survival rates of head-and-neck adenoid cystic carcinoma and assess the prognostic factors related to the patients' local recurrence and survival.
A retrospective study was conducted on 54 patients with adenoid cystic carcinoma. Demographic data, operative factors of patients before, during, and after surgery were reviewed and finally calculated using the Kaplan-Meier method.
Among the 54 patients, 61.1% were female, and 38.9% were male with an average age of 46.00 ± 14.52 years. The survival rate at 12, 24, 36, 60, 84, 100 and 120 months post-surgery were 100, 93.3, 84.4, 48.9, 24.4, 20.0 and 13.3%, respectively. Both the marital status (P = 0.002) and the type of surgery (P = 0.045) were significantly related to the overall survival of the patients, and the local recurrence significantly correlated with overall survival (P = 0.027).
According to the findings, marital status, type of surgery, metastases, histological staging, and local recurrence rate were related to the overall survival of the patients. Hence, it is of utmost importance to pay attention to these factors in health centers. It is recommended to opt for case-control and prospective studies with more samples for further investigation in the future.