Perioperative survival of elderly head and neck squamous cell carcinoma patients

Objectives/Hypothesis To evaluate the survival benefit of surgery for elderly head and neck cancer (HNC) patients. Study Design Retrospective national database cohort study of HNC patients. Methods The study is a retrospective cohort review of the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End‐Results (SEER) database from 2004 to 2009. We developed an estimated perioperative window, based on the institutional database at a tertiary academic center. The average time to surgery among HNC patients at this center correlated with SEER's 3‐month post diagnosis. From this estimate, we calculated postoperative (3 months), 2‐year, and 5‐year overall survival (OS) for patients receiving HNC surgery from 2004 to 2009 in the SEER database. Patients were matched for sex, tumor grade/stage, primary location, and radiation treatment status. Results Overall, after matching we found a statistically significant decrease in 3‐month OS for the elderly patients versus younger controls who received surgery (P