Pattern of head and neck malignant tumours in a Nigerian teaching hospital--a ten year review.

BACKGROUND: In Nigeria record of incidence and pattern of Head and Neck malignancies is scanty. In our Hospital, there had been no prior published report on this subject. OBJECTIVE: To study the pattern of occurrence of Head and Neck malignancies treated in Obafemi Awolowo university Hospitals Complex, Ile Ife, Nigeria. METHODS: medical records of patients with histopathologically confirmed head and neck malignancies over a 10 year period (1989--1998) were analyzed. MAIN RESULTS: Three hundred and thirteen (313) cases, made up of 184 (59%) males and 129 (41%) females were found. The most common sites for head and neck malignancies were found to be in the oral cavity (36.8%), the neck (26.8 %), the thyroid (13.7 %), and the esophagus (5.1%). The paranasal sinuses and the ear were the least affected anatomical sites with one (0.3 %) of cases each. The histopathological tumour types found in this work were lymphoma (40.26%), squamous cell carcinoma (25.23%), sarcoma (2.6%), while many other minor histopathological variants accounted for 31.9%. Lymphoma was the most common in children, while carcinoma was found in, and forms the most common histopathological variant of head and neck malignancies in the older age group. PRINCIPAL CONCLUSIONS: There is a high incidence of childhood head and neck malignancies found in this study in contrast to the Western literature where the highest incidence is found in the older age group and the elderly. Jaw malignancies constituted the most common malignancies of the oral cavity. Lymphoma and thyroid malignancies are relatively common in our center.