Treatment of Cancer of the Tongue at Hartford Hospital, 1931–1952

Abstract

CANCER of the tongue continues to rank as the most frequent intraoral neoplasm and accounts for about 2 per cent of all deaths from cancer. What is more distressing, five-year salvage rates for the more favorable and small lesions seldom exceed 66 per cent, and patients who have proved cervical-lymph-node metastases associated with the primary lingual carcinoma have a five-year survival of but 5 per cent. However, the over-all five-year survival from several clinics varies between 14 and 28 per cent.¹ This is a distressing situation, particularly since we are dealing with a generally literate population, frequently exposed to appropriate . . .