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At the recent American Laryngological Association meeting in San Francisco, Calif, Dr Roy Sessions of the Sloan-Kettering Memorial Cancer Institute, New York, NY, discussed the value of laryngeal videostroboscopy in patients with early glottic cancer. In his report, 18 patients with T1 glottic tumors and 7 patients with T2 glottic lesions underwent fiberoptic laryngoscopy with videostroboscopic examination. All were thought to have normal cord mobility. All of these patients had abnormal stroboscopic findings consisting of absent mucosal waves. In contrast, none of 29 patients with benign glottic lesions showed the abnormal cord stiffness demonstrated by the patients with tumor. Sessions felt that, after vocal cord stripping and/or radiation therapy of early cancer, the strobe examination may detect recurrent disease earlier than routine follow-up examination. The technique holds promise for following up tumor response during radiotherapy for T1 lesions. According to Sessions, videostroboscopy should be considered for all glottic cancers due

Radiotherapy for early glottic carcinoma has produced excellent results and low complication rates. Therefore, hemilaryngectomy and other forms of vertical partial laryngectomy have been used mainly for rescue therapy following radiation failure. Over a 9-year period selective application of this approach was used in eight patients out of 122 laryngeal cancer surgeries performed. Five patients were T1N0 and three were T2N0 at the time of initial diagnosis and at the time of recurrence. Three patients had healing problems postoperatively. Tracheal decannulation time was increased compared to patients who had hemilaryngectomy without previous radiotherapy. To date there has been no recurrence of carcinoma at any site with a mean follow-up of 58 months in surviving patients. This experience confirms reports which indicate that with careful selection, radiation failures for early glottic carcinoma can be rescued by hemilaryngectomy achieving excellent tumor control and moderately good preservation of laryngeal function.