Local Prognosis after Combined External and Interstitial Radiation Therapy for Carcinoma of the Tongue

Interstitial radiation therapy for the primary lesion and radical neck dissection for the metastatic nodal disease is in this department regarded as the treatment of choice for carcinoma of the tongue.Since the treatment results were not sufficiently good except in early malignancy, combined external and interstitial irradiation of the primary site has been used for the past 10 years.The external irradiation included the suprahyoid part of the ipsilateral side of the neck.For advanced cases, this combined irradiation was used in some cases supplemented with chemotherapy.Hyperbaric oxygen therapy was also applied in a small number of cases (FUCHIHATA et coll.1974).The reason for the adjunctive use of external therapy was mainly to decrease the tumor size in order to facilitate the insertion of the radium needles, and to prevent the development of nodal metastases.MAKINO (1973) demonstrated that the adjunctive use of external irradiation resulted in delayed development of nodal metastases without significant decrease of the accumulative frequency of such metastases compared with patients not receiving telecobalt therapy.The problem concerning the control of the primary site remained to be analysed.