Abstract
Clinical examination of 24 N0 cases of squamous cell carcinoma of the tongue (10 cases), the floor of the mouth (10 cases), and mandibular gingiva (4 cases), which received unilateral supraomohyoid neck dissection, was retrospectively performed.
Pathologically, lymph node metastasis was recognized in 8 cases (33.3%) of which prognoses are good. Among the 16 patients in which pathologically lymph node metastasis was not recognized, 1 patient had died of cervical lymph node metastasis, found after surgery, and the other 15 patients were surviving without recurrence or metastasis.
Three metastatic lymph nodes (LNs) were recognized in 1 case, and 1' LN in 7 cases. LNs were located in level 1 in 6 cases, and in level 2 in 2 cases. An extracapsular metastatic lesion was found in level 1 in 1 case. Histopathological malignancy of the primary lesion was relatively high in most of the cases examined.
From the results, it is suggested that supraomohyoid neck dissection may be effective not only for diagnosis but also for therapy, considering the histopathological malignancy of the primary lesion.
