Histopathological and patient-related characteristics of basal cell carcinomas of the head and neck influencing therapeutic management

Abstract

The authors hypothesize that histopathological characteristics of basal cell carcinomas of the head and neck (BCCHN) have changed over time and the correlation of BCCHN localization and histological tumour type can help improving the number and quality of necessary therapeutic interventions. Information of 222 patients with 344 BCCHN was gained. Descriptive measures were compared to prior studies to prove whether or not characteristics of basal cell carcinomas or patients have changed over time. Afterwards descriptive measures were correlated with number of conducted operations to evaluate if tumour localization, histological tumour type and number of operations depend on one another. Aggravating factors which lead to a higher number of operations were older age, greater size of BCCHN, adjacent elastosis, the localizations eye, ear and nose and histological tumour types morpheaform and nodularulcerated. In comparison to earlier studies characteristics of BCCHN and patients showed positive developments because of grown awareness of BCCHN. Furthermore, our correlations demonstrate that therapeutic results of BCCHN treatment are continuously improving. Nevertheless, treatment of aggressive morpheaform BCCHN in combination with distinctive patient characteristics still needs improvement.