Malignant vascular tumors of the head and neck

Abstract

Summary During a forty year period (1930 through 1969) twenty-seven patients with malignant vascular tumors of the head and neck region were seen at Memorial Cancer Center and twenty-one are now available to determine five and ten year end results. All cases are determinate, having received treatment, and none was lost to follow-up study. The classification of these tumors can be unduly complicated and therefore for the benefit of the clinician is simplified in this presentation: ten angiosarcomas and eleven hemangiopericytomas. The absolute and net five year cure rate was 25 per cent and was achieved by radical surgery alone. Among those having had previous treatment (more than half of our cases) there were no five year cures. The five year survival rate of 67 per cent was surprisingly high and can be explained by the prolonged clinical course of hemangiopericytoma as compared with angiosarcoma, for they represent two separate clinical and pathologic entities.