Staging of laryngeal carcinoma: comparison of high-frequency sonography and contrast-enhanced computed tomography

To evaluate the accuracy of high-frequency sonography on pretherapeutic T-staging in patients with laryngeal carcinoma.

Thirty-six consecutive patients with laryngeal carcinoma undergoing surgical resection were included in this study. All patients underwent ultrasonographic examination and contrast-enhanced computed tomography before surgery. These imaging interpretations were evaluated independently and then compared with the reference of postoperative pathological examination. McNemar's test was used for comparing the data obtained separately from ultrasonography and computed tomography.

There was one T2 stage tumour of an aryepiglottic fold undetected by sonography. Sonography failed to stage five tumours correctly; the T-staging accuracy was 83.3%. Contrast-enhanced computed tomography failed to stage four patients correctly; the T-staging accuracy was 88.8%. There was no difference between the pretherapeutic staging accuracy of ultrasonography and contrast-enhanced computed tomography (p=0.735).

Ultrasonography has a reliable pretherapeutic staging accuracy of laryngeal carcinoma. It can be a non-invasive complementary technique for pretherapeutic staging of laryngeal carcinoma.