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This study represents an in-depth evaluation of the impact of smoking and alcohol consumption on patients' outcome in 809 cases of oropharyngeal carcinoma. Prognostic parameters and additional information such as smoking and drinking habits were evaluated referring to the patients' case notes at the time point of first diagnosis. The overall 10-year survival rate was 45.5%, whereas 33.4% of the patients remained relapse-free. The great majority (92%) of patients had a history of smoking or were current smokers, whereas only 8% of the collective never smoked in their lifetime. Interestingly, we found a significant reduction of 10-year survival rates for smokers (28.8%) in comparison with nonsmokers (43.1%) and ex-smokers (P=0.0007). This study presents data from a large cohort of patients with oropharyngeal carcinoma providing evidence for a relationship between alcohol and tobacco consumption, and significantly worse prognosis.
Hilgert et al. (Wed,) studied this question.