Radiation therapy with or without chemotherapy is less effective for patients with HIV when compared with the recurrence and overall survival rates in patients who do not have HIV, according to research presented this week at the Multidisciplinary Head and Neck Cancer Symposium in Phoenix.
In the largest single institution study of its kind, researchers retrospectively studied 71 HIV-positive head and neck cancer patients treated between 1997 and 2010. Patients were followed for approximately 47 months, and the rates of recurrence and overall survival were very high at 69% and 55%, respectively. But the researchers found that 10% of patients also developed a second primary malignancy within five years after receiving radiation therapy.
Neither radiation nor radiation plus chemotherapy, both standard treatments for head and neck cancer, was as effective for HIV-positive patients when compared with HIV-negative patients, and more research is needed to develop treatments that can reduce the risk of recurrence and increase survival rates, the study authors concluded.
"Treating HIV-positive patients with head and neck cancers is extremely difficult, but becoming much more commonplace due to the advances in therapies that prolong the life of these patients," said lead study author Waleed Mourad, MD, PhD, a radiation oncologist at Beth Israel Medical Center in New York. "It is extremely important that we establish multimodality approaches and regimens that are better tailored to improve outcomes in HIV-positive head and neck cancer patients and minimize treated-related comorbidities."
