Significance of node biopsy before definitive treatment of cervical metastatic carcinoma

A survey was made of 714 radical neck dissections done alone or in combination with resection of a primary malignancy. Sixty-four (8.9%) of the patients had had a cervical node biopsy before diagnosis and definitive treatment. The complications of wound necrosis, local cervical recurrence, and distant metastasis were significantly higher in those patients than in patients who had had no biopsy or who had biopsy only at the time of definitive treatment. When 40 of the 64 patients were matched on the basis of age, sex, histological diagnosis, site and stage of the lesion and treatment protocol with 40 patients who had had no biopsy, this trend toward a higher complication rate when previous biopsy was done continued and was significantly higher for distant metastasis. The authors believe that these findings quantitatively confirm the accepted belief that, except for instances when no primary lesion can be found and the cervical mass must be biopsied for the purposes of diagnosis, such biopsy increases local complications and, by increasing the incidence of distant metastasis, decreases the chance for survival.