Objective: The aim of this study was to assess the surgical results of a series of patients from this unit who underwent extended temporal bone resection for recurrent squamous cell carcinoma as a salvage procedure.
Design: The surgical records of 15 patients were analyzed in detail. Each patient had salvage surgery in the form of an extended temporal bone resection with supraomohyoid block dissection, dural grafting, and free microvascular forearm or scalp rotation flap repair for recurrent squamous cell carcinoma in a radical mastoid cavity.
Results: Radical surgery yielded a 47% 5-year survival. Twenty-nine percent of the survivors had temporal lobe involvement that necessitated a partial excision of the temporal lobe of the brain. Histologic evidence of local lymph node involvement in the supraomohyoid neck dissection was present in 13% of cases. Those who died did so in the first postoperative year. All those with poorly differentiated tumors died. The survivors had well or moderately differentiated tumors.
Conclusions: Radiotherapy alone or partial temporal bone resection, most commonly a radical mastoidectomy with or without preoperative or postoperative radiotherapy is used by the majority of otolaryngologists in treating squamous cell carcinoma of the temporal bone. The 5-year survival rate after this treatment remains depressingly low and the prognosis gloomy, particularly for advanced tumors. The findings in this series of extended temporal bone resections as salvage surgery in recurrent disease is encouraging, and radical surgery combined with radiotherapy from the outset may give much better 5-year survival figures in the future than the conventional partial temporal bone resection and radiotherapy.