Lop Gros, JoanDel Prado Venegas, MaríaPujol, AlbertSauter, BlancaVásquez, RosselinCasasayas, MariaQuer, MiquelLeón, Xavier2022-07-252022-07-252022Lop J, Venegas MDP, Pujol A, Sauter B, Vásquez R, Casasayas M, et al. Causes of long-term mortality in patients with head and neck squamous cell carcinomes. Eur Arch Otorhinolaryngol. 2022 Jul; 279(7): 3657-64. DOI: 10.1007/s00405-021-07211-80937-4477http://hdl.handle.net/10230/53798Purpose: after treatment of a head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC), patients with an adequate control of the tumor have a decreased overall survival when compared to age- and gender-matched controls in the general population. The aim of our study was to analyze the causes of long-term mortality in patients with HNSCC. Methods: we carried out a retrospective study of 5122 patients with an index HNSCC treated at our center between 1985 and 2018. We analyzed the survival considering three causes of death: mortality associated with the HNSCC index tumor, mortality associated with a second or successive neoplasm, and mortality associated with a non-cancer cause. Results: after the diagnosis of an HNSCC the most frequent cause of death is the head and neck tumor itself during the first 3.5 years of follow-up. Thereafter, mortality is more frequently associated with competing causes of death, such as second malignancies and non-cancer causes. Mortality associated with second and successive neoplasms was 2.3% per year, a percentage that was maintained constant throughout the follow-up. Likewise, mortality attributable to non-cancer causes was 1.6% per year, which also remained constant. There were differences in the mortality patterns according to the characteristics of the patients. Conclusion: there are differences in the mortality patterns of patients with HNSCC depending on their characteristics. Knowledge of these patterns can help in the design of guidelines to improve the follow-up protocols of this group of patients to optimize the clinical cost-effectiveness.application/pdfengThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.info:eu-repo/semantics/articlehttp://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00405-021-07211-8Causes of deathCompeting mortalityHead and neck cancerLong-term mortalitySurvivalinfo:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess