Treatment of early-stage glottic cancer: meta-analysis comparison of laser excision versus radiotherapy.

Abstract

This is the first study to examine the management of early glottic cancer using meta-analytic methodology. The analysis shows that although there is a trend favouring TOL surgery for overall survival, there is no clear difference in oncologic outcome between TOL surgery and XRT. However, there is a trend toward improved posttreatment voice quality with XRT. This is of questionable clinical significance as objective voice analyses often do not correlate with subjective assessments.