Elective neck dissection in early oral squamous cell carcinoma: necessary?

Abstract

We investigated whether neck dissection should be performed to prevent T1-2N0M0 tongue cancer by using the Weiss and colleague’s decision tree method. The results showed that preventive neck dissection should not be recommended for T1-2N0M0 tongue cancer. However, preventive neck dissection is a suitable ap- proach when treating tongue cancer tumors with a thickness of ≥ 4 mm