Current status of sinonasal cancer survivorship care

Sinonasal cancer is a heterogeneous orphan disease of diverse histologies, each with distinct clinical, oncologic, and toxicity profiles. Because of the comparative rarity of these cancers, sinonasal cancers are treated as a grouped diagnosis despite their clinical and biological heterogeneity. Multimodality treatment with a combination of surgery, chemotherapy, and/or radiotherapy is the standard-of-care for advanced-stage patients but there are few surveillance or follow-up practice guidelines or formalized survivorship care pathways. A scoping literature review was conducted via PubMed, EMBASE, and Google Scholar. A total of 112 studies were included, which were grouped along the following topics: surveillance, second primary tumors, quality of life, and symptom burden. Sinonasal cancer tends to exhibit a higher rate of local failure and occur in a delayed fashion compared to mucosal malignancies of the head and neck. Moreover, the site of failure and time-varying risk of recurrence is histology-specific. Following multimodality treatment of the skull base, patients may experience endocrine, visual, auditory, sinonasal, olfactory, and neurocognitive deficits, as well as psychosocial impairments that impact multiple physical and neuropsychological domains, resulting in diminished quality of life. Sinonasal cancer patients would benefit from tailored, histology-specific survivorship programs to address the recurrence, second primary, and functional impairments resulting from disease and treatment toxicity.

A Proposed Link Between Acute Thymic Involution and Late Adverse Effects of Chemotherapy

Epidemiologic data suggest that cancer survivors tend to develop a protuberant number of adverse late effects, including second primary malignancies (SPM), as a result of cytotoxic chemotherapy. Besides the genotoxic potential of these drugs that directly inflict mutational burden on genomic DNA, the precise mechanisms contributing to SPM development are poorly understood. Cancer is nowadays perceived as a complex process that goes beyond the concept of genetic disease and includes tumor cell interactions with complex stromal and immune cell microenvironments. The cancer immunoediting theory offers an explanation for the development of nascent neoplastic cells. Briefly, the theory suggests that newly emerging tumor cells are mostly eliminated by an effective tissue immunosurveillance, but certain tumor variants may occasionally escape innate and adaptive mechanisms of immunological destruction, entering an equilibrium phase, where immunologic tumor cell death "equals" new tumor cell birth. Subsequent microenvironmental pressures and accumulation of helpful mutations in certain variants may lead to escape from the equilibrium phase, and eventually cause an overt neoplasm. Cancer immunoediting functions as a dedicated sentinel under the auspice of a highly competent immune system. This perspective offers the fresh insight that chemotherapy-induced thymic involution, which is characterized by the extensive obliteration of the sensitive thymic epithelial cell (TEC) compartment, can cause long-term defects in thymopoiesis and in establishment of diverse T cell receptor repertoires and peripheral T cell pools of cancer survivors. Such delayed recovery of T cell adaptive immunity may result in prolonged hijacking of the cancer immunoediting mechanisms, and lead to development of persistent and mortal infections, inflammatory disorders, organ-specific autoimmunity lesions, and SPMs. Acknowledging that chemotherapy-induced thymic involution is a potential risk factor for the emergence of SPM demarcates new avenues for the rationalized development of pharmacologic interventions to promote thymic regeneration in patients receiving cytoreductive chemotherapies.

Second Primary Malignancies in Patients With Melanoma Subtypes: Analysis of 120,299 Patients From the SEER Database (2000-2016)

Purpose

Evaluate incidence of second primary malignancies (SPM) after non-acral cutaneous melanoma (NACM), acral lentiginous melanoma (ALM), mucosal melanoma (MM), and uveal melanoma (UM).

Patients and Methods

First primary NACM, ALM, MM, and UM cases diagnosed 2000-2016 were extracted from SEER. Seer*Stat was used to calculate excess absolute risks (EAR) and standardized incidence ratios (SIR) of SPMs relative to a matched cohort from the general population. P-value of 0.05 determined significance.

Results

Inclusion criteria was met by 109,385 patients with NACM, 2166 with ALM, 2498 with MM, and 6250 with UM. Increased incidence of malignancies occurred after NACM (SIR 1.51; 95%CI, 1.49-1.54), ALM (SIR 1.59; 95%CI, 1.40-1.81), MM (SIR 2.14; 95%CI, 1.85-2.45), and UM (SIR 1.24; 95%CI, 1.14-1.34) relative to the general population. Cutaneous melanoma occurred more frequently after NACM (SIR 9.54; 95%CI, 9.27-9.83), ALM (SIR 12.19; 95%CI, 9.70-15.14), MM (SIR 10.05; 95%CI, 7.18-13.68), and UM (SIR 2.91; 95%CI, 2.27-3.66). Patients with initial NACM (SIR 2.44; 95%CI, 1.64-3.51) and UM (SIR 44.34; 95%CI, 29.91-63.29) demonstrated increased incidence of eye and orbit melanoma. Renal malignancies occurred more frequently after NACM (SIR 1.24; 95%CI, 1.11-1.38), MM (SIR 3.54; 95%CI, 1.62-6.72) and UM (SIR 1.68; 95%CI, 1.09-2.48). Increased incidence of thyroid malignancies was observed after NACM (SIR 1.83; 95%CI, 1.61-2.06), ALM (SIR 3.74; 95%CI, 1.71-7.11), MM (SIR 4.40; 95%CI, 1.77-9.06), and UM (SIR 3.79; 95%CI, 2.52-5.47). Increased incidence of lymphoma was observed after NACM (SIR 1.20; 95%CI, 1.09-1.31) and ALM (SIR 2.06; 95%CI, 1.13-3.46).

Conclusion

Patients with NACM, ALM, MM, and UM have increased incidence of SPMs compared to that expected from the general population. Each of these melanoma subtypes had increased occurrence of cutaneous melanoma and thyroid cancer; some, but not all, had increased occurrence of renal malignancies, eye and orbit melanoma, and lymphoma.

Sinonasal carcinomas - A single-centre experience at Prince of Wales Hospital, Sydney, Australia, from 1994 to 2016

INTRODUCTION

Sinonasal carcinomas (SNCs) are rare neoplasms that are often diagnosed at advanced stages due to asymptomatic growth of tumours in the spaces of the sinonasal complex. Treatment is associated with high morbidity, and outcomes have only improved slightly in the past few decades despite advancements in treatment modalities. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the efficacy and safety of treatment at our institution.

METHODS

This retrospective cohort study analysed patients who received definitive treatment at the Prince of Wales Hospital (POWH), Sydney, for non-metastatic SNC. Patients with non-carcinoma and olfactory neuroblastoma pathology were excluded. Data were collected from the POWH electronic patient database. Survival functions were calculated through Kaplan-Meier analysis, and multivariate analysis for prognostic factors was performed through Cox regression.

RESULTS

Seventy-five patients from 1994 to 2016 were eligible for analysis. Overall 5-year local control (LC), ultimate local control (ULC), overall survival (OS) and cancer-specific survival (CSS) were 76 ± 6%, 80 ± 5%, 69 ± 6% and 77 ± 5%, respectively. On multivariate analysis, clinical stage was prognostic for LC and primary site was prognostic for OS and CSS. Lymphovascular invasion and tumour inoperability were also predictive of CSS.

CONCLUSION

Survival and local control rates at our centre were greater than those reported in the literature. Early-stage patients treated with surgery alone had excellent oncologic outcomes. Radical surgery with postoperative radiation provides the best outcome in the setting of advanced disease.