Management of Early-Stage Tongue Cancer

In general, tongue cancer is usually treated surgically and additional therapy is carried out if patients have advanced cancers. Although surgical treatment is performed at the early stage of tongue cancer, still some problems emerge, such as late cervical lymph node metastasis and elective neck dissection. We previously recommended elective neck dissection for patients with T2 tongue cancers (Tateda et al., 2000). However, the range of tumor sizes that would require elective neck dissection remains to be determined.