Extended supraglottic laryngectomy. Review of 84 cases

Extended supraglottic laryngectomy is a surgical procedure by which the boundaries of standard supraglottic laryngectomy are extended to include the base of the tongue and/or pyriform sinus and/or one of the arytenoids, according to the extent of epilaryngeal or extralaryngeal invasion by vestibular cancer. We report the results of 84 extended supraglottic laryngectomies performed by our group from 1970 to 1980. Besides the highly favorable 5-year cure rate (75%), full functional rehabilitation followed in all but three patients, who were therefore submitted to secondary total laryngectomy. Rehabilitation time is often somewhat longer than in standard supraglottic laryngectomy, especially when an ample resection of the base of the tongue is required. Combined resection of the base of the tongue, aryepiglottic fold, and one of the arytenoids may further lengthen the rehabilitation period. We believe that extended supraglottic laryngectomy should be performed more often, not only for actual invasion, but also for suspected invasion of extralaryngeal structures.