[Surgery of the hypopharynx after radiotherapy]

Changes in surgical procedures for hypopharynx cancer after definitive radiotherapy are important since the use of pedicled myocutanous flaps and free digestive transplants. Postoperative course is improved and salvage surgery more frequent. From 1970 to 1990, 160 hypopharyngeal carcinomas were operated on after radiotherapy, 103 due to failures or complications after definitive irradiation and 57 metachronous cancers. During this period, the rate of lethal postoperative complications decreased from 25% to 8%. Crude survival rates are 51% at 1 year, 22% at 3 years and 15% at 5 years. Poor prognostic features are local extension, positive margins and extracapsular nodal spread. Postoperative deaths and failures in primary or neck account for 60% of the causes of death. Results of salvage surgery are unsatisfactory: the choice of definitive radiotherapy with surgery in reserve must be restricted to selected cases.