Prevalence of alterations in chest computerized tomography in patients with head and neck cancer.

Objective: to assess the prevalence of abnormalities found by computed tomography (CT) of the chest in patients with squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck.

Methods: we retrospectively analyzed chest CT exams of 209 patients with squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck. The CT findings were stratified as inflammatory / infectious, parenchymal, nodular uncharacteristic and nodular metastatic/tumoral.