Clinical Outcome of Therapy for Squamous Cell Carcinoma of the Oropharynx; A Retrospective Study of 50 Cases.

We retrospectively reviewed 50 cases of squamous cell carcinoma of the oropharynx treated at the Department of Otolaryngology, Kobe City General Hospital, between 1987 and 1996. Twenty eight cases underwent radical radiotherapy, and the remaining twenty two were treated mainly by surgery with or without radiotherapy.Multivariate analysis demonstrated that the N stage classification was the only significant parameter affecting the survival rate among the four co-parameters: T stage, N stage, histological differentiation and location of the primary lesion. In the well-differentiated group, the survival rate of the surgically-treated cases was significantly higher than that of cases treated with radical radiotherapy. We conclude that radical radiotherapy is less useful in cases of a high N stage (≥N2a) and in well differentiated types of squamous cell carcinomas.