Vol.101 No.5 contentsPRACTICA OTO-RHINO-LARYNGOLOGICA
Vol. 101 No. 5 May 2008
Clinical Analysis of Neck Dissection Patients
Katsuro Sato and Sugata Takahashi
(Niigata University Faculty of Medicine)
Neck dissection is a highly important surgical procedure in the treatment of squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) of the head and neck since the control of the nodal disease is highly important in these patients. In this paper, 131 patients (210 necks) treated in our department were analyzed. The most frequent primary lesion site was the oral cavity, followed by larynx, hypopharynx and mesopharynx, and treatment of metastatic nodes was considered important especially in patients with SCC in those regions. As the surgical procedure for neck dissection, (modified) radical neck dissection was chosen for higher N stage cases, although it was also applied to lower N stage cases. Postoperative irradiation was performed for 70％ of the patients, and control of the neck was considered good as recurrent neck disease occurred in 8％ of the patients, and only 20％ of those died of recurrent neck disease. The most common primary site showing cervical recurrence was the oral cavity, and control of neck disease is considered important, especially in patients with SCC of the oral cavity. Patients with ≦ number of pN 1 receiving postoperative irradiation, and patients with pN(－) and ≦ number of pN 1 without postoperative irradiation showed significantly higher survival rates. Postoperative irradiation should be done for patients with ≧ number of pN 2, and follow-up without postoperative treatment should be considered for the cases of ≦ number of pN 1. Further consideration of patient selection with regard to the area of dissection and the indication for postoperative irradiation without decreasing the survival rate is needed to further improve the treatment of head and neck SCCs.
Key words :neck dissection, squamous cell carcinoma, head and neck