Histological type homogeneity: a cornerstone in analyzing temporal bone malignancies data
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LETTER TO THE EDITOR
Histological type homogeneity: a cornerstone in analyzing temporal bone malignancies data Leonardo Franz1 · Elisabetta Zanoletti1 · Antonio Mazzoni1 · Gino Marioni1 Received: 2 June 2020 / Accepted: 12 June 2020 © Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2020
Dear Editors, We read with interest the very recent article by CorreiaRodriguez et al. [1] who described a series of 27 patients undergone primary surgery between 2004 and 2018 for external auditory canal (EAC) malignancies. As also stated by the authors, primary carcinoma of the EAC is an uncommon malignancy whose staging, prognostic factors, and therapeutic management still remain debated, especially in advanced cases. For this reason, reports about clinical series from different institutions are always beneficial to improve our understanding of such disease. However, the only way to allow an unbiased interpretation of clinical results and compare the outcome of different series is reporting data as homogeneously as possible. The guidelines from the International Collaboration on Cancer Reporting emphasized the importance of histologically classifying temporal bone tumors, remarking their different propensity for local, regional, or distant spread [2]. Despite the crucial role of histotype homogeneity in analyzing temporal bone malignancies data, also recent reports described the outcomes of histologically heterogeneous case series [3], making their conclusions of limited value, and perhaps misleading. Correia-Rodriguez et al. [1] reported data about a singleinstitution case-series of EAC cancers, in which squamous cell carcinomas (SCCs), basal cell carcinomas (BCCs) and a case of ceruminous adenocarcinoma were all grouped together. Basing on their cohort’s data, they found, as potential negative prognostic factors, age
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