We retrospectively review outcomes of applying boron neutron capture therapy (BNCT) to unresectable advanced or recurrent head and neck cancers. Patients who were treated with BNCT for either local recurrent or newly diagnosed unresectable head or neck cancers between December 2001 and September 2007 were included. Clinicopathological characteristics and clinical outcomes were retrieved from hospital records. Either a combination of borocaptate sodium and boronophenylalanine (BPA) or BPA alone were used as boron compounds. In all the treatment cases, the dose constraint was set to deliver a dose <10–12 Gy-eq to the skin or oral mucosa. There was a patient cohort of 62, with a median follow-up of 18.7 months (range, 0.7–40.8). A total of 87 BNCT procedures were performed. The overall response rate was 58% within 6 months after BNCT. The median survival time was 10.1 months from the time of BNCT. The 1- and 2-year overall survival (OS) rates were 43.1% and 24.2%, respectively. The major acute Grade 3 or 4 toxicities were hyperamylasemia (38.6%), fatigue (6.5%), mucositis/stomatitis (9.7%) and pain (9.7%), all of which were manageable. Three patients died of treatment-related toxicity. Three patients experienced carotid artery hemorrhage, two of whom had coexistent infection of the carotid artery. This study confirmed the feasibility of our dose-estimation method and that controlled trials are warranted.
We studied 1809 patients with oral cancer who visited and were treated, in 2002, at the 148 institutions certified as training facilities by the Japanese Society of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeons. Of these institutions, 39 are dental university hospitals, 44 are medical university hospitals, 64 are general hospitals, and for 1 institution, the classification was not known. The patients consisted of 1071 (59.2%) males and 738 (40.8%) females (male: female ratio, 1.45:1), who had a average age of 65.2 years. The tongue (40.2%) was the most common site affected, followed by the gingiva (32.7%), buccal mucosa (10.1%), and oral floor (9.0%). There were 6 cases of multiple intraoral cancers. On histopathological examinations, squamous cell carcinoma (88.7%) was the most common type found, followed by adenoid cystic carcinoma (2.1%), and mucoepidermoid carcinoma (1.7%). Cases classified as T2N0 were the most common (32.1%), followed by T1N0 (21.4%), T4N0 (8.0%), and T2N1 (7.6%). Distant metastasis occurred in 17 patients (1.0%). Nonepithelial tumors, among which malignant melanoma was the most common type, accounted for 1.8% of the tumors. The sizes of the nonepithelial malignant tumors ranged from 1.0 to 7.0 cm, with an average size of 3.7 cm.
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