Role of surgery in head and neck cancer with fixed nodes

In a series of 51 cases of Stage IV head and neck carcinomas, 12 selected patients were studied retrospectively, in order to determine the role of surgery in their management. Two patients who received a tumoricidal dose of radiation prior to radical neck dissection survived over five years, but no viable tumor was found in either specimen, suggesting a radiation cure. Nine patients died within three years, with either local recurrence or distant metastases; one patient died of asphyxiation, without disease, within five months. It appeared that surgery played no substantial role in improving the survival of the patients with head and neck cancer with fixed nodes.