RESUMO
<p><b>OBJECTIVE</b>To analyze the prognostic factors affecting the disease-free survival in T1/T2N0M0-staged patients with squamous cell carcinoma of tongue and compare the effectiveness of different neck treatment modalities.</p><p><b>METHODS</b>97 consecutive patients with early-staged squamous cell carcinoma of tongue were included in this study. The treatment and following-up records were reviewed retrospectively. Cox proportional hazard model was used to identify the statistically significant prognostic factors in the 6 potential factors. Kaplan-Meier method was used to estimate the disease-free survival and analyze the survival rate among the different levels, and log-rank method for comparison of the different distribution of the survival. A special focus was on the effectiveness of different neck treatment modalities.</p><p><b>RESULTS</b>T stage, treatment methods of primary tumor, the modalities of neck treatment and cell differentiation were statistically significant prognostic factors. The value of P and relative risk (RR) were P < 0.001, RR = 4.387; P = 0.04, RR = 0.496; P = 0.003, RR = 0.504; P < 0.001, RR = 2.620, respectively. The difference of disease-free survival was statistically significant among the different levels under the different factors.</p><p><b>CONCLUSION</b>The disease-free survival was affected by neck treatment modalities remarkably in cN0 stage patients. Selected neck dissection together with adjuvant irradiation could decrease the recurrence risk by 49.6% according to the results of this study. TNM stage system could describe the characteristics of the patients with early-staged squamous cell carcinoma of tongue reasonably.</p>