Arguments in Favor of Precautional Treatment of Cervical Nodes in Clinically N0 Oral Cancer

Our retrospective and unrandomized clinical study covers 317 squamous cell carcinomas of the oral cavity initially N0 and treated with curietherapy from January 1959 to December 1970. Upon conclusion of the treatment on T, a radical dissection of the neck was performed only on 110 patients (34.7%) and the other 207 were not submitted to surgery. The incidence of N0 N+ cases was 27.3% (30/110). The clinical evolution showed that in the group not submitted to radical dissection 53 of 179 cases (29.6%) with adequate follow-up had lymph nodal relapses; 15/69 of these were initially T1 (21.7%) and 38/110 initially T2,3 (34.5%). The data concerning clinical evolution and analysis of the survival curves for the 2 groups supply arguments in favor of the systematic treatment of the lymphatic areas of the neck in initially N0 oral carcinomas.