Background: Concurrent chemoradiotherapy (CCRT) is used to treat advanced head and neck cancer. The accuracy of evaluating lymph nodes metastases following CCRT is important for subsequent therapy.
Patients and methods: Patients were divided into two groups, the complete response (CR) and the non-CR groups, as determined by imaging and fine-needle aspiration cytology (FNAC) performed 4-8 weeks after the CCRT, and the findings were compared with the clinical characteristics.
Results: The sensitivity and the specificity of each evaluation method were as follows: 52.9% and 74.2%, respectively, for computer tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI); 88.2% and 66.1% for ultrasonography (US); 35.3% and 96.0% for fluorodeoxyglucose-positron emission tomography (FDG-PET) or PET-CT; and 71.4% and 95.6% for FNAC.
Conclusion: To evaluate the response of lymph node(s) treated by CCRT, US is useful as a positive screening tool and FDG-PET and PET-CT as negative screening tools. FNAC is useful in evaluating suspicious lymph nodes in both positive and negative cases.