Abstract:Objective To explore the prognosis, recurrence characteristics and risk prediction model of early glottic laryngeal cancer treated with CO2 laser microsurgery under suspension laryngoscope. Methods A retrospective analysis was conducted on 234 patients with early-stage (T1-2N0M0) glottic laryngeal cancer who underwent CO2 laser microsurgery under suspension laryngoscope at the Second Affiliated Hospital of Xi’an Jiaotong University between January 2017 and December 2024. All patients were followed up for at least one year. The demographic characteristics of patients, smoking and drinking history, TNM stage, pathological differentiation degree and tumor sub-region invasion status were collected. The Cox proportional hazards model was adopted to analyze the independent risk factors for recurrence. Among them, a hierarchical progressive method was used to construct the model, and the Akaike Information Criterion (AIC) and C-statistics were used to screen the simplified model. The receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve was used to evaluate its discrimination ability, and the low, medium and high-risk levels were divided according to the optimal cut-off value. The Kaplan-Meier method was used to compare the differences in recurrence-free survival among groups. Results A total of 234 patients were included in this study, with 42 (17.95%) experiencing recurrence. Univariate analysis showed that recurrence was associated with T stage, tumor involvement of the laryngeal ventricle, subglottic region, and anterior commissure (P<0.05). Multivariate Cox regression analysis identified smoking, tumor involvement of the laryngeal ventricle, and anterior commissure as independent risk factors for postoperative recurrence (P<0.05). Poor tumor differentiation (P=0.051) approached the prespecified significance threshold. A simplified predictive model incorporating smoking history, low tumor differentiation, and tumor involvement of the glottic vestibule and anterior commissure yielded an area under the curve (AUC) of 0.799 (95%CI: 0.722~0.876) for predicting laryngeal cancer recurrence after CO2 laser microsurgery under suspension laryngoscope. Conclusions CO2 laser microsurgery under suspension laryngoscope is an effective treatment for early glottic laryngeal cancer. Smoking, low tumor differentiation, involvement of the glottic vestibule, and anterior commissure invasion are independent risk factors for postoperative recurrence. A simplified predictive model based on these four high-risk factors demonstrates good value in predicting postoperative recurrence in patients with early glottic laryngeal cancer.