Abstract
Shoulder syndrome, a sequelae of cutting the spinal accessory nerve during neck dissection, remarkably decreases QOL of the patients. We examined post-operative shoulder funtions in 43 patients who underwent total neck dissection in our hospital from 1999 to 2004.
All of the subjective symptoms, objective findings and degree of shoulder abduction were significantly better in the patient group with the spinal accessory nerve preserved (preserved group, n=25) than in the group with the nerve resected without reconstruction (resected group, n=11). The patient group with the nerve reconstructed either by re-anastomosis or nerve-grafting (n=4) showed a similar shoulder function to the preserved group. The patient group with the nerve reconstructed by nerve-grafting between the central cut-end of the cervical plexus (C2 or C3) and the peripheral cut-end of the accessory nerve (n=3) showed better fnctional results than the resected group.
