SNB is associated with significantly less postoperative morbidity and better shoulder function than elective neck dissection. This supports our opinion that patients with nodal negative early SCC of the oral cavity should be offered SNB.

The aim this study was to evaluate imaging Wndings using position emission tomography (PET) in combination with computed tomography (CT) and 18F-Xuorodeoxyglucose ( 18 F-FDG) in sinonasal malignant melanoma (SNMM) of the head and neck in a retrospective analysis of a consecutive cohort of patients.

The purpose of the present study is to evaluate long-term outcome and patients' satisfaction after endoscopic therapy of Zenker's diverticulum (ZD) and to analyze the results of the stapler technique in comparison with the application of the carbon dioxide (CO2) laser. A retrospective cohort study with outcome analysis of patients undergoing endoscopic cricopharyngeal myotomy with either stapler or CO2 laser between October 2000 and December 2010 by a single surgeon was performed. Patient's medical charts were reviewed with respect to symptoms before intervention, intra and post operative complications, reasons for the choice of endoscopic technique, and postoperative relief of symptoms. Long-term follow-up was acquired by a standardized self-assessment questionnaire. Seventy-four patients (51 men, 23 women) with a median age at operation of 74 years (range 45-93 years) were enrolled in this study. Forty-five patients underwent endoscopic repair of a ZD with stapler, 29 patients with CO2 laser. The mean follow-up was 4.7 years. We did not observe significant differences for intra and post operative complications, hospital stay, time until normal oral food intake, need for revision, and long-term subjective symptom relief between the two groups. Overall complication (12 %) and recurrence rate (11 %) for the endoscopic techniques were low. Endoscopic surgery had also a high success rate in recurrence cases (87.5 %). According to our study, the most important factor for the success rate of endoscopic treatment was the intraoperative exposure of the ZD. The endoscopic minimally invasive approach is a safe and effective treatment modality and can be considered as the treatment of choice for primary and recurrent ZD. The intraoperative exposure is decisive for the technique applied and the long-term success.

The lack of melanoma-associated antigen (MAA) expression has been associated with the reduced overall survival in melanoma patients. In order to investigate whether the MAA expression detected on cell cultures established from melanoma patients might relate to the overall survival in these patients, we screened primary cell cultures derived from 37 melanoma metastases for the expression of five known MAA: Melan-A, tyrosinase, gp-100, MAGE-1 and MAGE-3 by polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and fluorescence-activated cell sorting (FACS). MAA expression detected by PCR was found at a high percentage in evaluated melanoma cell lines: 25 of 28 (89%) were positive for Melan-A, 22 of 28 (79%) were positive for tyrosinase, 26 of 28 (93%) were positive for gp-100, and 18 of 28 (64%) were positive for MAGE-3 expression. Using the FACS method the percentage of MAA-positive cell lines was much lower: 14 of 31 (45%) cell lines were positive for Melan-A, eight of 31 (26%) were positive for tyrosinase, 13 of 31 (42%) were positive for gp-100, six of 31 (19%) were positive for MAGE-1, and 14 of 31 (45%) were positive for MAGE-3 expression. Kaplan-Meier survival analysis demonstrated that the patients whose cell lines were positive for Melan-A expression by PCR had significantly longer overall survival time as Melan-A PCR-negative cases (P=0.0038). This could not be shown for any of the markers tested by FACS. Our results suggest that the expression of Melan-A/MART-1 in patient-derived cell cultures may help to identify a group of melanoma patients with prolonged survival.