Is suprahyoid dissection a diagnostic operation in lower lip carcinoma?

Carcinoma of the lower lip can be treated primarily by surgical procedures. One of the most prominent characteristics of the tumor is that it can metastasize to submental and submandibular lymph nodes. For that reason, bilateral suprahyoid dissection with surgical treatment of the primary lesion is a diagnostic approach for some investigators and therapeutic for others. We evaluated whether bilateral suprahyoid dissection is a diagnostic approach in lower lip cancer or not. Prophylactic suprahyoid dissection had been performed in 53 patients who had been operated for squamous cell carcinoma of the lower lip in Ankara Oncology Hospital. Four of the cases were female and 49 male. The median age was 62. Forty-five out of 53 cases had T2 lesions and in the remaining 8 had T3 lesions. All patients were clinically node negative. In the dissection material, lymph node metastasis were present in 8 out of the 45 cases who had T2 tumors (17,7 %) and in 2 out of the 8 cases who had T3 tumors (25%). Three of the 10 cases who had regional lymph node metastasis underwent radiotherapy after surgery. Seven of them did not receive radiotherapy. Thirty-nine patients had regular follow-up for a median of 4.5 years. During this period, none of the patients had regional recurrence in cervical lymph nodes. According to these data, we conclude that bilateral suprahyoid dissection is both a diagnostic and a therapeutic approach in T2, T3 and clinically N0 lower lip tumors.