Simultaneous bilateral neck dissections

From April 1985 to December 1989, 65 patients with advanced head and neck squamous cell carcinoma, underwent simultaneous bilateral neck dissection (SBND) at Saitama Cancer Center. Three and five year survival percentages were 53 and 42%, respectively. In patients without histologic involvement of cervical nodes, five year survival rate was 83%, whereas in those with nodal involvement five year survival fell to 32% (p less than 0.005). The conclusion were the following: (1) Of 38 patients diagnosed to have lymph node involvements on one side of neck before operation, 8 patients (22%) were found to have bilateral lymph node metastasis in clinicopathological study. Of 13 patients having no clinical lymph node metastasis on both sides of neck, 7 patients (54%) were found to have unilateral lymph node metastasis. Of 16 patients diagnosed to have bilateral lymph nodes involvement, 10 patients were found to have bilateral neck metastasis and 2 had unilateral neck metastasis. (2) Of 35 cases of hypopharyngeal canners, 19 cases had clinically positive lymph nodes on one side of neck. Of these 19 cases, 5 cases (26%) had histologically positive nodes on the opposite side. 14 (40%) of 35 cases had metastasis on the opposite side. In conclusion, SBND is a proper treatment for metastatic cervical cancer from a primary lesion of the head and neck, especially in hypopharyngeal cancers, because the rate of recurrence seems to be related more to the difficulty in controlling lymph node metastasis than to the failure in treatment of the primary cancer.