{"doi":"10.1002/hed.70080","title":"Neoadjuvant Immunotherapy for Periauricular Cutaneous Squamous Cell Carcinoma","abstract":"BACKGROUND: The standard-of-care for advanced periauricular cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma (pCSCC) is surgery and adjuvant radiation therapy. Neoadjuvant immunotherapy recently demonstrated high pathologic response rates in patients with resectable pCSCC. METHODS: This retrospective review was conducted at a tertiary cancer center and included patients with pathologically confirmed pCSCC within the periauricular area treated with curative-intent surgery with or without neoadjuvant immunotherapy from 2005 to 2025. Patients who received neoadjuvant immunotherapy followed by surgery were age- and stage-matched to those who underwent upfront surgery. The primary outcomes were event-free survival (EFS) and overall survival (OS), estimated using the Kaplan-Meier method. RESULTS: The study included 85 patients. Twenty-four (28.2%) of whom received neoadjuvant immunotherapy and 61 (71.7%) underwent upfront surgery. The two cohorts had no differences in staging or disease burden at presentation. Forty-eight patients presented with recurrent disease, equally distributed among the groups (57% vs. 54%, p > 0.05). Patients receiving neoadjuvant immunotherapy had longer median EFS than those undergoing upfront surgery (5.9 vs. 3.4 years; hazard ratio [HR], 0.33; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.13-0.84; p = 0.02). Specifically, EFS at 2 years was 87% in the neoadjuvant group compared with 55% in the upfront surgery group (p < 0.05). Median OS was also longer in the neoadjuvant group (not met vs. 4.4 years; HR, 0.32; 95% CI, 0.11-0.90; p = 0.031). CONCLUSIONS: Neoadjuvant immunotherapy improved survival outcomes in patients with advanced resectable pCSCC. These findings underscore the importance of including this patient population in upcoming randomized trials.","journal":"Head & Neck","year":2025,"id":547974,"datarank":0.10397207708399181,"base_score":0.6931471805599453,"endowment":0.6931471805599453,"self_citation_contribution":0.10397207708399181,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.10397207708399181,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":1,"citer_count":1,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9039,"is_data_producer":true,"deposit_databanks":{"ClinicalTrials.gov":["NCT06568172"]},"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2025-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":459496,"name":"Neil D. Gross","orcid":"0000-0002-9427-0743","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":908856,"name":"Marc‐Elie Nader","orcid":"0000-0001-9295-0174","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":244404,"name":"Renata Ferrarotto","orcid":"0000-0002-3561-215X","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":237127,"name":"Moran Amit","orcid":"0000-0002-9720-7766","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":714243,"name":"Priyadharsini Nagarajan","orcid":"0000-0002-5346-2669","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":908855,"name":"Paul W. Gidley","orcid":"0000-0003-3706-8781","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":731517,"name":"David Z. Allen","orcid":"0000-0002-6727-4378","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":17,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T02:53:53.962932Z","pmid":"41137728","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}