Abstract
The prognosis of patients with oral cancer who had extranodally spreading neck metastases was extremely poor. Postoperative radiotherapy has been performed for those patients since 1992.
A retrospective study was made to ascertain the effect of postoperative radiotherapy for patients who had neck metastasis with extranodal invasion, and the following results were obtained.
1) There were no significant differences except time of treatment between background factors of 17 patients who underwent postoperative radiotherapy (RT+group) and those of 12 who did not undergo radiotherapy (RT-group) .
2) There were no significant differences between neck control rate or survival rate of RT+group and that of RT-group.
3) An average time of survival of RT+group was a little longer than that of RT-group, but the duration of hospitalization of the former was also longer than of the latter.
4) These findings failed to show the usefulness of radiotherapy for those who had lymph node metastasis with extranodal invasion.
