Background: Manifestation of chondrosarcoma (CS) in the head and neck region is rare but it is the most frequently encountered non-epithelial malignancy of the larynx. Since this tumor entity is frequently neglected, its characteristics including differential diagnosis and therapy will be discussed in the following.
Patients: From 1975 to 1995, five cases with CS were diagnosed and treated in the Department of Otorhinolaryngology, Head and Neck Surgery, University of Kiel.
Results: The medical history of this five patients (one woman, four men, average age: 71 years) varied from 9 months to 10 years. Three patients had a fixation of the vocal cord; one patient had obviously reduced movement of the vocal cord. Two cases revealed a moderate and three cases a high differentiation in the histological examination. Initially one case was diagnosed as a chondroma. The origin of tumor growth was the cricoid cartilage in four patients and the cartilage of the arytenoid in one patient. Surgical treatment was either by partial or complete laryngectomy in two cases each. One patient refused any therapy. Two patients including the latter died of tumor related causes.
Conclusions: Laryngeal CS grow slowly. Diagnosis is frequently made late in the course of disease. Obtaining of tissue for histological examination and diagnostic delimitation towards a chondroma can be difficult. Therapy depends on the degree of histological differentiation with radical excision of low or moderately differentiated CS and function preserving surgery in case of high differentiation.