Abstract: PURPOSE: To explore the clinical characteristics of mucoepidermoid carcinoma (MEC) in the head and neck region, analyze the related factors of its onset, metastasis, recurrence and prognosis, and provide references for clinical diagnosis, treatment and prognosis evaluation. METHODS: The clinical data of 223 patients with head and neck MEC who were treated at Shandong Provincial Hospital Affiliated to Shandong First Medical University from 2012 to 2024 were collected, and complete prognostic data were obtained through outpatient and telephone follow-up. The Kaplan-Meier method in GraphPad Prism 10 software was used to calculate the survival rate, and Cox proportional hazards regression model in SPSS 27.0 software was adopted for univariate analysis. Further multivariate analysis was performed on the factors with statistical significance. RESULTS: The overall survival rate of the 223 MEC patients was 78.92%, the recurrence rate was 6.28%, and the metastasis rate was 11.21%. Among them, the survival rate of recurrent patients was 64.29%, and that of metastatic patients was 76.00%. Cox regression analysis showed that age, N stage, and histological differentiation were factors affecting patient prognosis. Survival curve analysis revealed that patients with low differentiation had significantly lower survival rates compared to those with moderate or high differentiation (P<0.001). CONCLUSIONS: The prognostic factors of patients with head and neck MEC have hierarchical characteristics. The overall survival rate is closely related to age, N stage, and the degree of tissue differentiation; the risk of recurrence is mainly affected by N stage and the degree of tissue differentiation; the occurrence of metastasis is significantly correlated with perineural invasion and the degree of tissue differentiation.

Key words: Head and neck region, Mucoepidermoid carcinoma, Salivary gland tumor, Prognostic analysis, Survival rate, ¹²⁵I radioactive seed implantation