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Updated: Apr 30, 2026
Learning Modern Laryngeal Surgery in a Dissection Laboratory
Published on: March 18, 2020
Effectiveness of therapeutic selective neck dissection in laryngeal cancer
Eugenia Allegra1, Teresa Franco, Rossana Domanico
1Department of Otorhinolaryngology - Head and Neck Surgery, Magna Graecia University of Catanzaro, Catanzaro, Italy.
Background:
The aim of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of selective neck dissection (SND) in patients with laryngeal cancer and clinically positive cervical nodes.
Subjects And Methods:
A retrospective review of the clinical records of 58 consecutive untreated patients affected by laryngeal carcinoma and submitted to surgical treatment was performed.
Results:
Twenty-six (44.8%) patients received monolateral neck dissection and 32 (55.2%) bilateral neck dissection. A total of 90 hemineck dissections were performed. Histopathological examination revealed that 25 of the 58 patients had negative nodes (pN0) and 33 had positive nodes (pN+). Extracapsular spread was found in 12 of the 33 pN+ patients. Twenty-eight of the 58 (48.2%) patients were submitted to adjuvant radiotherapy. Six of the 58 patients submitted to neck dissection had neck recurrence (rate of 10.3%). The only independent prognostic factor for neck recurrence was extracapsular spread. For the 58 patients, the 5-year overall survival was 50% and the disease-specific survival 68.9%. The 5-year disease-specific survival was 76% for pN0 patients and 63.6% for pN+ patients.
Conclusions:
SND can represent a therapeutic procedure because it has shown oncological results comparable to those of comprehensive neck dissection, especially when SND is combined with adjuvant radiotherapy.
