How to treat squamous cell carcinoma of the nasal septum

        Malignant tumors of nasal cavity and sieve sinus are relatively rare, accounting for about 1% of systemic malignant tumors and a low proportion of head and neck tumors. So far, the clinical management of nasal septal sinus cancer varies due to the complex anatomical structure and the treatment methods, and the treatment plans and therapeutic effects differ due to the different pathological types of nasal cavity and septal sinus cancer. Single treatment is only applicable in early stage cases, while most of the middle and late stage cases need comprehensive treatment to achieve the best therapeutic effect.       The difficulty in clinical management of nasal sinus cancer is that because its early symptoms are easily ignored, it is sometimes treated as nasal polyp and removed in ENT department. Squamous carcinoma is the most common pathological type of nasal septal sinus tumor. The nasal septal sinus is adjacent to the eye, skull base and brain, which often makes clinical radiotherapy and surgeons hesitant due to the involvement of tumors in these areas, resulting in tumors that are not easily controlled. Therefore, in order to better improve the survival rate and survival quality of patients, it is necessary to further explore the treatment effect and prognosis in nasal septal sinus squamous carcinoma, so that the treatment of nasal septal sinus squamous carcinoma can be standardized to achieve the maximum treatment to eradicate the tumor. We discuss from the following aspects.       I. Comprehensive treatment Comprehensive treatment is the main means to treat middle and late stage nasal septal sinus cancer, and the survival rate of preoperative or postoperative radiotherapy is higher than that of radiotherapy alone by more than 10%, and the survival rate of preoperative or postoperative radiotherapy as two ways of comprehensive treatment is statistically significant compared with that of radiotherapy group, which is consistent with the literature report that the survival rate of comprehensive treatment of preoperative and postoperative radiotherapy is higher than that of radiotherapy alone. However, with the development of new technologies in radiotherapy, the survival rate of intensity-modulated radiotherapy has improved significantly compared with that of conventional radiotherapy.       Early cases can achieve ideal treatment results through surgery alone, and this view is confirmed by the present group of cases, and it can be said that early cases can obtain better cure rates through surgery alone. In cases with suspicious residuals after preoperative radiotherapy or surgery at an outside institution, the presence or absence of tumor residuals on pathological examination after reoperation had different prognostic effects, and cases without tumor residuals could achieve a higher survival rate. Despite negative pathology, some patients recurred postoperatively, which may be related to the degree of clarity of the primary site of the tumor. In terms of preservation of orbital contents and skull base, the R+S group was slightly higher than the S+R group, and the lowest was in patients in the RF group, because once the tumor was uncontrolled or recurred after radiotherapy, the tumor involvement was more extensive, and the preservation rate of skull base and orbital contents could be improved by planned preoperative radiotherapy, about which no report was found in the literature, and no prospective work was done in this regard in our group.       The relationship between stage, pathological differentiation and surgery and survival rate TNM stage is the key to determine the prognosis of treatment. Most patients with squamous carcinoma of the nasal septum have reached stage III or IV when they are diagnosed, while early cases can achieve a high survival rate with surgery alone, the later the stage the worse the survival rate, which is consistent with the reports in the literature. The survival rate of patients with lymphatic metastasis is only 21%, while that of patients without lymphatic metastasis can reach 53.7%, which is also an important indicator of prognosis.       The degree of differentiation of squamous carcinoma also has some relationship with prognosis, the lower the degree of differentiation the higher the rate of distant metastasis, but there is no clear relationship between the degree of differentiation and survival rate, for hypofractionated squamous carcinoma the addition of chemotherapy is necessary, which needs further confirmation.       Surgical procedures have some relationship with prognosis in the following aspects. The survival rate of patients with clean tumor resection can reach 70.0%, while the survival rate of those with residual tumor is poor or even very low, only 11.1%. Patients with general resection of orbital contents or skull base tend to have late staging and lower survival rate, and the surgery is not easy to remove cleanly, while patients who do not need to remove orbital contents or skull base have higher survival rate. In clinical work, it is important to clearly determine the extent of tumor involvement before surgery. Once the orbital contents or skull base are not well prepared for resection before surgery, it is not easy to remove some advanced tumors cleanly during surgery. Preoperative preparation of blood, flap design, and enhanced CT or MRI are essential for the thoroughness of surgery in some advanced tumors. Because the nasal septum is limited and adjacent to maxillary sinus, eye, skull base and brain, especially the judgment of whether the tumor invades the cavernous sinus is important to cut the tumor cleanly. Nasal endoscopic surgery to remove nasal septal sinus tumor has become more common.       The recurrence rate of tumor is not correlated with the treatment method through analysis, but closely related to the stage, the later the stage, the higher the recurrence rate. 92.2% of the cases in this group have recurrence within 3 years, so close review within 3 years is necessary to detect local recurrence early for further treatment.       The main cause of death in squamous sinus carcinoma of the nasal cavity is local recurrence, followed by distant metastasis, because the rate of lymphatic metastasis in the neck is low, so neck metastasis is not the main cause of death. Most of the deaths in the short-term cases were caused by local recurrence, and most of the deaths in the cases with longer survival were related to distant metastasis and second primary cancer. In our group, 74.6% of deaths were within 3 years. The necessity of adjuvant chemotherapy for hypofractionated carcinoma to control distant metastases has not been confirmed in the literature.       In addition to the combination of radiotherapy and surgery, the addition of high-dose arterial infusion chemotherapy with radiotherapy can also achieve better results, which needs to be further investigated.       In conclusion, the current choice of treatment modality for squamous carcinoma of the nasal septum is firstly R+S or S+R combined treatment, and R+S is chosen as much as possible when it is possible to preserve the orbital content of the skull base, in order to improve the survival rate while preserving the appearance and organs. Early stage tumors can be treated with a single treatment to achieve the desired outcome.