Introduction:

Malignant tumors of the head and neck include several histological subtypes and the prognosis depends on their anatomical location.

Objective:

To describe the clinical characteristics and treatment of patients diagnosed with malignant head and neck tumors.

Methods:

A descriptive, longitudinal and retrospective study was carried out from January 1, 2005 to December 31, 2017 at the Oncopediatrics service in the National Institute of Oncology and Radiobiology, according to demographic, clinical and therapeutic variables. Patients were identified from the databases of the hospital registry of the above mentioned institute. All patients with head and neck tumors that had a histological diagnosis were selected.

Results:

73 patients were identified, with a slight predominance of females (60.3%), with a mean age of 12 years (range between 0 and 18 years). The most frequent histological type was thyroid carcinoma (35.6%), followed by rhabdomyosarcomas (27.3%). The most used treatment was surgery (38.3%) followed by the combination of surgery plus radiotherapy and chemotherapy (22%).

Conclusions:

Tumors of the head and neck are infrequent. The treatment of choice is total resection, accompanied by radiotherapy and chemotherapy, depending on the histological type and the clinical stage.

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