Benefit of postoperative chemoradiotherapy for patients with unknown primary squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck.

Background: Postopertative adjuvant chemoradiotherapy recently became an established modality for patients with selected high-risk locally advanced head and neck cancers. The optimal treatment of unknown primary squamous cell cancer of the head and neck (SCCHN) continues to be controversial, since major randomized studies excluded those patients.

Methods: We conducted a retrospective review of patients treated during 1995 to 2002 for unknown primary SCCHN.

Microsatellite analysis of serum DNA in patients with head and neck cancer.

We have shown previously that microsatellite alterations in serum DNA was predictive of distant metastasis in a study with 21 primary head and neck squamous cell carcinoma patients. To further investigate serum microsatellite alterations as a prognostic tool, we carried out microsatellite analysis of serum DNA with 10 markers on 152 patients with head and neck cancer. Forty-five percent (68/152) of patients had microsatellite alterations of serum DNA identical to corresponding tumor DNA.