A 6-Year Retrospective Study of the Demographics of Glottic Keratosis in a Tertiary Care Voice Centre

Since Keratosis may be accompanied with severe dysplasia or malignancy; early management of this condition is of essence. However, since this condition has a high rate of recurrence the surgical dilemma remains as to how frequently the surgeries should be performed and what should be the factors to guide this decision. The objectives of our study are to attempt to understand the demographics of laryngeal keratosis and its behaviour pattern including the potential to recur, disease upstaging and malignant transformation. This is a 6-year retrospective study of patients presenting to a Voice and Swallowing Centre. All patients had been operated upon and confirmed to have keratosis with or without cancer. The medical records and stroboscopy videos were reviewed for details such as age, gender, history of smoking, laterality of lesion, location of lesion on the vocal fold, recurrence with any disease upstaging or malignant transformation. In the case of recurrence of lesion the histopathology of the recurrence was compared with the primary histopathology. Chi square test & Fisher’s exact test was used for comparison of proportions between two groups. A total of 71 patients were included in the study, 88% were males. Recurrence was seen in 20 patients (28%), 14 with benign recurrence and 6 with malignant. Rate of recurrence when the primary keratosis had been benign was 30.7 and 20.6% when the primary keratosis had been associated with malignancy. A majority of patients with glottic keratosis were males and all that underwent malignant transformation were males. The rate of postoperative recurrence when the primary keratosis had been benign was higher than when it had been keratosis associated with malignancy. This may indicate the need for aggressive surgical management for benign keratosis.