A study of 48 patients with metastatic carcinoma in the neck from an unknown primary site has revealed several facts. Among patients with squamous cell carcinoma, the three‐year survival rate was 40%. Whether treated with surgery (radical neck dissection) or with radical irradiation alone, the response of these tumors was similar in smaller N1 nodes; when treated with a combined therapeutic approach, they responded well in larger (N2 and N3) cervical nodes. Whether or not the primary tumor was found did not affect survival rates; the stage of the presenting nodal metastases did not appear to correlate with survival.
A large group of patients with adenocarcinoma metastatic to cervical lymph nodes all died of the disease within two years. All appeared with metastases in the supraclavicular fossa; no modality of treatment to the neck, whether by surgery or irradiation, was effective.
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