Abstract
A series of 45 recurrences in the soft tissues of the neck following lymph node dissection in 497 patients bearing carcinoma of the upper aerodigestive passages is reported. Only 22 cases that presented perilymph node metastases and/or in which there were reasons to indicate insufficient surgical radicality had been subjected to radiotherapy after surgical lymph node dissection; the other 23 cases had not been subjected to radiotherapy because the aforementioned premises had been lacking. All the recurrences therefore occurred in patients with clinically and histologically ascertained metastatic lymph nodes. The presence of perilymph node metastases and the judgement of surgical radicality was thus found insufficient criteria to plan future complementary postoperative radiotherapy. However, even in those cases in which postoperative radiotherapy was performed, there was a rather high incidence of recurrences, as high as 64.7% in patients with carcinoma of the tongue. Our data indicate the opportunity of a clinical trial with preoperative radiation therapy in patients with clinically evident lymph node metastases. Thirty-six of these recurrences were situated in the upper parts of the cervical region. The prognosis is very poor in such cases, so much so that only 2 of our series were disease free at 3 years after the treatment.
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