Local Morphologic Changes Related to Laryngeal Carcinoma

Abstract

In a series of 178 patients who underwent partial or total laryngectomy for laryngeal carcinoma, the morphologic changes at a distance from the neoplasm were investigated with whole organ serial sections. We found 60 cases with extensive squamous metaplasia of the epithelium outside of the vocal cords, 24 case with hyperplastic epithelium of the vocal cords, 29 cases with mild or moderate dysplasia, 5 cases with foci of in situ carcinoma, 3 cases with a second carcinoma with minimal stromal invasion, and 4 cases with a double synchronous primary carcinoma. In 55 cases we observed the contemporary presence of a carcinoma and a mono-or bilateral laryngocele. In the excretory ducts of the salivary glands present in the laryngeal mucosa we found a reserve cell hyperplasia in 100% of the cases, a mature squamous metaplasia in 25%, and an oncocytic metaplasia in 14%. These observations led us to consider the laryngeal cancer as an organ disease, in which the oncogenic stimulus operates on all the laryngeal structures and determines lesions of different severity up to neoplasm.