Case Report
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2021. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Clin Cases. Aug 26, 2021; 9(24): 7092-7098
Published online Aug 26, 2021. doi: 10.12998/wjcc.v9.i24.7092
Long-term survivor of metastatic squamous-cell head and neck carcinoma with occult primary after cetuximab-based chemotherapy: A case report
Christina Große-Thie, Claudia Maletzki, Christian Junghanss, Kathie Schmidt
Christina Große-Thie, Claudia Maletzki, Christian Junghanss, Kathie Schmidt, Department of Medicine, Clinic III - Hematology, Oncology, Palliative Medicine, Rostock University Medical Center, Rostock 18057, Germany
Author contributions: Große-Thie C was the patient’s doctor in charge, responsible for collecting medical history and contributing to the revision of the manuscript; Schmidt K was responsible for collecting medical history, reviewing the literature, drafting the paper, and contributing to the revising of the manuscript; Maletzki C and Junghanss C treated and revised the manuscript; all the authors issued final approval for the version to be submitted.
Informed consent statement: The patient provided informed written consent prior to publication of the case report.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.
CARE Checklist (2016) statement: The authors have read the CARE Checklist (2016). The manuscript was prepared and revised according to the CARE Checklist (2016).
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Kathie Schmidt, MD, Medical Assistant, Department of Medicine, Clinic III-Hematology, Oncology, Palliative Medicine, Rostock University Medical Center, Ernst-Heydemann-Str. 6, Rostock 18057, Germany. kathie.schmidt@med.uni-rostock.de
Received: February 19, 2021
Peer-review started: February 19, 2021
First decision: March 25, 2021
Revised: April 6, 2021
Accepted: July 14, 2021
Article in press: July 14, 2021
Published online: August 26, 2021
Processing time: 185 Days and 14.4 Hours
Core Tip

Core Tip: A 42-year-old female patient suffered from metastatic squamous-cell head and neck cancer with occult primary with lymph node and bone metastases. She received palliative immune-chemotherapy with cetuximab, 5-fluorouracil, and platinum as first-line treatment, and subsequent irradiation of further abdominal lymph node and bone metastases. Although survival rates are very poor in this setting, the patient is still alive 10 years after treatment and in complete remission. Here, we present a rare case of long-term survival despite poor prognosis after palliative immunotherapy even before the era of immune checkpoint inhibitors.