Patient-reported quality of life and toxicity in unilateral and bilateral radiotherapy for early-stage human papillomavirus associated tonsillar carcinoma.

The purpose of this study was to compare self-reported health-related quality of life (QoL) and symptom burden in early stage tonsillar carcinoma patients treated with unilateral (URT) and bilateral radiotherapy (BRT). This is a secondary analysis of a larger study assessing patient reported outcomes in human papillomavirus (HPV) oropharyngeal cancer (OPC) patients. Recruited patients were ≥12 months from completion of radiotherapy. This analysis included only patients with T1-2, N1-2b tonsil cancer and excluded patients with base of tongue involvement or recurrent disease. QoL and patient reported toxicity was measured using the EORTC QLQ-C30 module and the MDASI-HN. Patients were enrolled from November 2018 to May 2019. Of the 136 patients recruited to the main study, 43 were eligible for this substudy (22 URT, 21 BRT), with a median age and follow up of 58.2 and 3.0 years respectively. The two groups were balanced with respect to patient, tumor and treatment factors with the exception of higher rates of T2 disease (27% v 71%, In the highly conformal radiotherapy era, BRT in early HPV tonsillar cancer survivors has an enduring impact on long-term QoL and toxicity.

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Crown Copyright © 2020 Published by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of European Society for Radiotherapy and Oncology.

Déclaration de conflit d'intérêts

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.