Global Journal of Medical Research, F: Diseases, Volume 22 Issue 1

Treatment modality: Distribution of cancer cases according to type of treatment is shown in Table 2. Majority of them received the combination therapy of surgery and radiotherapy (69.6% patients). Nearly 8 becomes necessary to study the incidence and demographic profile of LOCP cancers based on regional data. The incidence of lip and oral cavity cancer in our study was nearly 13.9%. This is in sharp contrast to 3.9% Table 3: Number and Relative Proportion of patients according to Type of Treatment given (n = 1992) Type of treatment Number (n=441) Percentage Surgery alone 42 9.5 Surgery + Chemotherapy 1 0.2 Surgery + Radiotherapy 307 69.6 Radiotherapy +Chemotherapy 55 12.5 Surgery + Chemotherapy + Radiotherapy 36 8.2 22 Year 2022 Global Journal of Medical Research Volume XXII Issue I Version I ( D ) F © 2022 Global Journals Socio-Demographic and Clinical Profile of Lip, Oral Cavity and Pharyngeal Cancer in an Urban Cancer Centre in Coimbatore IV. D iscussion The trends of lip, oral Cavity and pharyngeal cancers show wide variation worldwide. Hence it people (1.8%) who were in the advanced stages of the disease received palliative care. Total 441 100 incidence in the world and 7.6% incidence in India. 2,13 Although the national statistics show a higher incidence of LOCP cancers, the present study shows that the incidence rate is almost doubled, compared to that of the national statistics. This is a major cause for concern. The males (74.6%) were affected more commonly than females (25.4%) in our study. The male – female ratio was nearly 2.9:1. This is in contrast to the global data where the ratio was approximately 2:1 and Indian data where the ration was nearly 1.8:1. 2,10 This Indian study by Majhi et al mentions that patients have a better awareness and higher will to seek medical treatment in the developed parts of the country i.e., western and southern India, so the females in these areas, access the health care system better. 2 However these studies are done only in the capital cities like Chennai, Trivandrum and Pondicherry, and cannot be generalised to the whole south India. The present study was done in the Coimbatore district of Tamilnadu which is not as developed as these capital cities. Our hospital receives cancer cases from the farthest of the villages in neighbouring districts also. This can be attributed to the gross difference in the sex ratio compared to the national and global statistics. In our study, the majority of LOCP cancer cases (62%) belonged to the age group of 51-70 years. This corroborates with the studies done by Saika et al., 14 and Gupta et al. 15 Lip and oral cavity cancers formed the major constituent of the LOCP cancers (51.2%) in the GLOBOCAN cancer statistics 2018. 2 In our study too, lip and oral cavity cancer constituted about 59.6% of all LOCP cases. Of this mouth (27%) was the most common type. The incidence of the cancer hypopharynx is nearly 20% in our study, whereas it was only 10.2% in the global statistics. 2 However, the incidence of cancer salivary glands among our study population (3.2%) was comparatively lower when compared to the global statistics (7.6%). Du et al., stated that from 1990 to 2017, the global incidence for nasopharyngeal cancers decreased dramatically while the incidence for lip and oral cavity cancers and other pharyngeal cancers increased. 16 GLOBOCAN 2018 data shows that nasopharyngeal cancers constitute around 18% of LOCP cancers. 2 In our study, there were only 4 cases of nasopharyngeal cancer (0.9% of LOCP cancers). Ariyawardana et al conducted a study in Australia where he reported that lip cancer was the most common cancer contributing to 36% of all LOCP cancers. 5 But there were only 5 cases of lip cancer in our study. (1.1% of LOCP cancer cases). Such low numbers may be attributed to the limited sample size in the study. This may also be attributed higher incidence of personal habits like smoking, alcohol, tobacco chewing and consuming various forms of tobacco like gutka, pan masala and betel nut, which invariably increase the risk of oral cavity and pharyngeal cancers (except nasopharyngeal cancer) whereas have lesser association with lip cancer and nasopharyngeal cancer. It is also noteworthy that there is a steady decline in the prevalence of smoking and tobacco chewing in the developed nations. 17, 18 This steady decline has been attributed to the decreased incidence of oropharyngeal cancers and increase in other LOCP cancer globally. 5