BACKGROUND: Cancer of the oral tongue is the second most common @entity5 among males in various parts of India. Despite advances in diagnosis and treatment the failure rates in @entity5 are high and survival poor. Majority of these failures occur in untreated neck. METHOD: A retrospective review of the records of 75 @entity1 undergoing surgery for the treatment of squamous cell @entity1697 was carried out to ascertain the pattern of @entity3 in the neck and to evaluate the sensitivity of clinical examination in predicting nodal spread. RESULTS: All the @entity1 underwent primary surgery. Cervical lymph node @entity3 was found in 35.6% of T1 and T2 @entity5 and 62.35% of T3 and T4 @entity5 . Sensitivity of clinical examination was found to be 54.5% and specificity of 61.9%. Level II was the most commonly involved (63.6%). Isolated level IV involvement was never found in clinically negative neck. @entity5 stage and node status were found to have a significant impact on disease free survival in both univariate and multivariate analysis. CONCLUSIONS: As the sensitivity and specificity of the clinical examination is low we suggest that methods like ultrasound or CT Scan of the neck should be regularly employed to improve the sensitivity and specificity of the examination. Furthermore as isolated level IV involvement is never found in our series, we suggest that a prophylactic supraomohyoid neck dissection should be carried out in all @entity1 with a clinically node negative neck with @entity5 , to achieve a better disease free survival.

Patterns of cervical @entity3 from XXXX .

@entity5 :: ('MESH:D009369', 'Disease') :: ['cancer of oral tongue', 'Tumour', 'cancer', 'cancer of the oral tongue', 'tumours'] @entity1 :: ('9606', 'Species') :: ['patients'] @entity1697 :: ('MESH:D009062', 'Disease') :: ['carcinoma of the oral tongue'] @entity3 :: ('MESH:D009362', 'Disease') :: ['metastasis']
@entity1697 :: (MESH:D009062,Disease) :: ['carcinoma of the oral tongue']
