Morbidity of combined therapy for the treatment of supraglottic carcinoma: Supraglottic laryngectomy and radiotherapy

Many surgeons find that patients have increased morbidity after supraglottic laryngectomy if postoperative irradiation is given, but this remains poorly documented. Twenty-nine patients undergoing supraglottic laryngectomy were retrospectively reviewed. Seventeen received postoperative radiotherapy, and 12 did not. The mean follow-up was 64 months. When compared to patients treated with supraglottic laryngectomy alone, irradiated patients had a significantly higher incidence of lifelong gastrostomy dependency (35% versus 0%; p = .03) and acute upper airway obstruction (29% versus 0%; p = .05). There was a trend toward greater tracheotomy dependency (24% versus 0%), aspiration pneumonia (35% versus 9%), and delayed independent swallowing (34.8 weeks versus 7.8 weeks) in the patients treated with combined therapy, but this difference was not significant. A morbidity index score was developed to evaluate the overall lifelong morbidity of these patients, and this was found to be significantly higher in patients treated with surgery and radiotherapy (2.29 versus 0.83; p = .04). Overall survival was equal in both groups. We have shown that radiotherapy increases the morbidity of supraglottic laryngectomy. This should be considered when planning treatment for patients with supraglottic carcinoma.