Andrew Larson

and 9 more

Objectives To establish patient-reported outcome measures (PROM) on quality of life (QOL) for early stage floor of mouth carcinoma (FOM-CA) undergoing surgical resection and split thickness skin graft (STSG) reconstruction. Design Retrospective analysis with a validated questionnaire Setting Tertiary academic cancer center Participants Patients with pathologic stage T1/T2 FOM-CA who underwent resection and STSG reconstruction Main Outcome Measures University of Washington QOL (v4) questionnaire completed after at least 6 months since surgery Results 24 out of 49 eligible patients completed questionnaires with a mean follow up of 41 months (range: 6-88). Subsites of tumor involvement/resection included: 1) lateral FOM (L-FOM) (n = 17), 2) anterior FOM (A-FOM) (n = 4), and 3) alveolar ridge with FOM, all of whom underwent lateral marginal mandibulectomy (MM-FOM) (n = 3). All patients reported swallowing scores of 70 or better (“I cannot swallow certain solid foods”). 96% (23/24) reported speech of 70 or better (“difficulty saying some words, but I can be understood over the phone”). A-FOM patients reported worse chewing than L-FOM patients (mean: 50.0 vs. 85.3; p = 0.01). All four A-FOM patients reported a low chewing score of 50 (“I can eat soft solids but cannot chew some foods”). Otherwise, there were no significant differences between subsite groups in swallowing, speech, or taste. Conclusions STSG reconstructions for pathologic T1-T2 FOM-CA appear to result in reasonably high PROM QOL outcomes with the exception of A-FOM tumors having worse chewing outcomes.