Early supraglottic cancer.

Early supraglottic cancers (T1 and T2) are treated today with several dissimilar programs. Operation or irradiation alone, combined irradiation and operation, and irradiation with operation for salvage are the options. This study analyzed the effectiveness of operation alone in a group of 94 patients with early lesions. There were no local failures in the group. The only cause of failure was recurrence in the neck and distant metastasis in 15% of patients. Comparisons were made of effectiveness of treatment with regard to local and neck failure, voices retained, frequency of retreatment, and determinate survival to the alternate treatment programs. No differences were found in regard to survival with any of the contemporary programs. There are differences in terms of retreatment frequency, voice preservation, and cause of failure between programs. Conservation surgery is preserving voices today. Combined therapy seems of little value in the early cancers.