The use of postoperative irradiation--its goals and 1978 attainments.

The use of postoperative irradiation as an adjunctive measure for better control of local and regional disease after a surgical procedure has been used at the Anderson Hospital since approximately 1965. The common clinical setting occurs in those patients in whom, after surgical ablation of the tumor, there are microscopic foci of residual disease at the margins, perineural invasion, histologically a very poorly differentiated carcinoma, dermal lymphatic involvement, multiple nodes in the neck or very large nodes in which the tumor has broken through the nodal capsule and entered the connective tissue. We have been applying this criterion for the treatment of salivary gland malignancies, squamous carcinomas of the hypopharynx and supraglottic larynx, and all sites in the head and neck in which there was extensive cercical nodal metastasis. The results of this therapeutic approach will be reported and discussed.