Keywords:
Cancer, Staging, Education, CT, Oncology, Head and neck
Authors:
G. B. Verrone1, F. Mungai2, M. Pietragalla2, L. Bonasera2, V. Miele2; 1Firenze/IT, 2Florence/IT
DOI:
10.26044/ecr2019/C-1540
Methods and materials
We retrospectively evaluated patients diagnosed with OPSCC (palatine tonsils and tongue base).
81 patients were recruited regardless of tumour staging; of these,
12 were excluded because they had not undergone contrast-enhanced staging CT in our hospital and 7 were excluded due to important artefacts from metal implants or dental amalgam (Fig. 3).
62 patients were finally included,
44 men and 18 women,
the age ranged from 42 to 81 years.
HPV status was established by evaluating overexpression of p16 protein by immunohistochemistry.
CT scans were evaluated by a radiologist with ten years of experience in head and neck oncology and a radiologist in training with 4 years of experience, without knowing the HPV status.
The morphological characteristics of T were evaluated,
classifying the lesion growth pattern as expansive and/or infiltrating the deep musculature (Fig. 4, Fig. 5).
The appearance of lymphadenopathy was classified as cystic or not and the overt extranodal extension (ENE) was also evaluated (Fig. 6, Fig. 7).
the criteria used to define cystic lymphadenopathy are those proposed by Goldenberg et al.
[6]:
- smooth and thin capsular wall (<2mm)
- homogeneous hypodense content (<20HU) in most of the lesion.
Statistical analysis was performed with a χ2 test between the HPV status and the following categorical variables:
- exophytic and/or infiltrative growth pattern of primary lesion;
- the presence of extranodal extension and cystic appearance of lymphadenopathies (Fig. 8).