Characterization of Yemeni patients treated for oral and pharyngeal cancers in Saudi Arabia.

OBJECTIVES: To determine the relative frequency and rank of oral cancer (OC) and pharyngeal cancer (PC) among Yemeni cancer patients who were treated and registered in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) over 14 years, and to characterize these patients by different grouping factors.

METHODS: In this retrospective study, the Saudi Cancer Registry, Riyadh, KSA officially provided the data regarding all Yemeni patients registered between 1994 and 2007. These data were reclassified and analyzed to present the cancer distribution by the main sites adopted by Globocan 2008. The OC and PC patients were statistically described and analyzed according to the demographic data and tumor details. This study was conducted at the Oral Medicine, Medically Compromised and Research Clinic, Department of Dentistry, Riyadh Military Hospital, Saudi Arabia between January and April 2011.

RESULTS: There were 5862 Yemenis registered with malignancies. The OC ranked the eighth most common malignancy (215, 3.7%) with 1.65:1 male to female ratio, whereas PC ranked the seventh (245, 4.2%) with 2.06:1 male to female ratio. The most affected oral sub-site was the tongue (91, 42.3%) while the nasopharynx accounted for 79% (194) of PC. The PC patients were significantly younger than those with OC (45.88±16.72 versus 55.6±15.75). The squamous cell carcinoma was the most frequent morphological type (289, 63.5%) but significantly more frequent in OC. Approximately 56% (255 patients) were diagnosed at advanced stage, however, significantly more frequent in PC (155, 64.6%).

CONCLUSIONS: The relative frequencies of oral and pharyngeal cancers in Yemen are quite high. The demographic and tumor characteristics of these cancers are obviously different.