Staging soft tissue sarcoma of the head and neck: Evaluation of the AJCC 8th edition revised T classifications.

BACKGROUND

The American Joint Committee on Cancer (AJCC) has proposed new T classifications for head and neck sarcomas in the 8th edition of the AJCC Cancer Staging Manual, but these classifications have not been evaluated for prognostic utility in tumor staging.

METHODS

The predictive ability of revised AJCC T classifications was evaluated by nonlinear multivariable regression using records from the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results database (N = 2756). A proposed staging algorithm was developed using a subset of records and compared to the AJCC 7th edition using a separate validation dataset.

RESULTS

Categorization of tumor size using revised AJCC 8th edition T classifications accurately reflected the predictive information of this intrinsically continuous variable. A proposed staging system based on revised AJCC T classifications showed significant improvement in clinical performance compared to the previous AJCC 7th edition staging system.

CONCLUSIONS

Stratifying risk of sarcoma-specific death by categorization of tumor size is informative for head and neck sarcoma. A staging algorithm based on revised AJCC 8th edition T classifications is validated and proposed for further evaluation in staging sarcomas of the head and neck.