Impacts of Hepatitis B Infection in Patients with Head and Neck Squamous Carcinoma.

e18051 Background: Hepatitis B Virus (HBV) infection was known to be have impacts of occurrence and survival in different malignancies. We aim to evaluate the clinical association with head and neck squamous cell cancer (HNSCC) and HBV infection. Methods: A retrospective review was conducted on the medical records and cancer registry database at the Taichung Veterans General Hospital (Taichung, Taiwan) between January 2007 and December 2015. Patients with histologically proven squamous cell carcinoma of oral cavity, oropharynx, hypopharynx and larynx were enrolled in the study. HBV infection was defined as HBsAg seropositivity. Clinical features, hepatic function test and five-year overall survival (OS) were compared between patients with and without HBV infection. Results: A total of 1826 HNSCC patients were analyzed. 225 of them (12.3%) were proved HBV-infected. The HBV-infected patients was diagnosed at younger age (< 65 years; 76.1% vs. 65.5%, p< 0.012) and had a higher proportion of initial liver cirrhosis (11.6% vs. 3.6%, p< 0.001) and hepatic dysfunction (10.7% vs. 6.1%, p= 0.009) included elevation of alanine transaminase (ALT), aspartate transaminase (AST) and prothrombin time expressed as international normalized ratio (INR). The other baseline characteristics were similar. The five-year OS were 52.9% and 48.6% in the HNSCC patients with or without HBV infection, respectively ( p= 0.341). The incidence of later founded hepatic dysfunction during follow-up was similar (31.1% vs 26.2%, p= 0.122). Conclusions: Information from this study indicated that HBV-infected HNSCC patients may present in younger age, more initial liver cirrhosis, and hepatic dysfunction. However, HBV infection did not have negative impacts on survival outcome and later founded hepatic dysfunction in those patients. Characteristics and survival of HBsAg (+) vs. HBsAg (-) HNSCC Patients[Table: see text]