Effect of transoral laser microsurgery vs open partial laryngectomy on the prognosis of patients with early laryngeal carcinoma: propensity score-based analysis

Objective To evaluate the effect of surgical procedures (transoral laser microsurgery (TLM) and open partial laryngectomy (OPL)) on the prognosis of patients with early laryngeal cancer. Methods A total of 760 patients diagnosed with early laryngeal cancer (T1-2N0M0) and treated with TLM ( n = 416) or OPL ( n = 344) between 2004 and 2015 were abstracted from the SEER database. Propensity score matching (PSM) and stabilized inverse probability of treatment weighting (SIPTW) were performed to obtain comparable cohorts. The survival rates were estimated by the Kaplan–Meier method, and compared using the log-rank test. Univariate and multivariate Cox regression analyses with a false discovery rate (FDR) correction were applied to contrast the association between two surgical approaches and overall survival (OS) and disease-specific survival (DSS). Results The 5-year OS for the TLM group was 79.5% versus 77.7% for the OPL group ( P = 0.619). Similar results were revealed for the comparison of 5-year DSS rates (91.1% versus 91.5%, P = 0.891). After PSM and SIPTW balance the confounding factors, no significant difference was observed in the OS and DSS of patients treated with TLM compared to patients treated with OPL. The consistent results were still yielded (all P > 0.05), when stratified by gender, age, year of diagnosis, residence, household income, tumor site, T stage, differentiation, and adjuvant therapy. Conclusion This study provides strong evidence that there is no significant difference in the prognosis of early laryngeal carcinoma between the treatment of TLM and OPL, which may be helpful to guide the clinical decision-making of these patients.