Clinical Examination and Diagnostic Techniques in Head and Neck Oncology

Careful clinical examination in the case of suspected malignoma plays a central role in the planning of specific therapies. It is well known that patients with carcinoma of the upper aerodigestive tract develop metachronous secondary carcinoma in up to 40% of cases. This circumstance influences decisively the diagnosis and treatment concept of mucosal head and neck cancer. However, it must be mentioned clearly that the prognosis of patients suffering from head and neck cancer does not mainly depend on the primary tumour, but on the presence or absence of lymphogenic metastasis. Thus the identification of lymphogenic metastasis, the description of the location of lymph node metastases and—which is especially important for the further course of the disease—the detection of distant metastases plays an important role in addition to the detection of the primary tumour. Only the entire assessment of these findings allows a therapeutic regime adapted to the stage of the tumour disease according to international standards.