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Definitive Chemo-Radiotherapy for Regionally Advanced Head and Neck Cancer With or Without Up-front Neck Dissection

NCT02918955 · Status: COMPLETED · Phase: PHASE3 · Type: INTERVENTIONAL · Enrollment: 65

Last updated 2025-11-20

No results posted yet for this study

Summary

Treatment of regionally-advanced head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) requires a multidisciplinary approach with a combination of surgery, radiotherapy (RT) and chemotherapy. Due to these aggressive combined modalities, patients undergoing treatment and many survivors develop toxicities which impact quality of life (QoL) and sometimes lead to mortality.

Lymph node metastases of HNSCC are frequent and considered one of the most important prognostic factors, resulting in decreased survival by 50%. More than three decades, the optimal management strategy of node positive HNSCC was a key subject of debate. In summary, the current literature provides us two important findings: First, with the contemporary imaging and treatment modalities, there is no role of a planned neck dissection (ND) added to (chemo)radiotherapy ((C)RT) in terms of oncological outcome and survival. Second, with modern RT techniques, a tailored treatment followed after an up-front neck dissection (UFND) allows a significant reduction of treatment volumes and de-escalation of the dose to the neck, leading to reduction of treatment related toxicities.

In this study strategies with and without up-front neck dissection prior to chemo-radiotherapy will be compared.

Conditions

  • Head and Neck Neoplasms

Interventions

DRUG

Chemotherapy (Cisplatin)

100 mg/m2 every three weeks during radiotherapy In Arm B, chemotherapy can be omitted in case of a cT1-2 primary and a surgical downstaged pN0-1 neck without lymphatic extracapsular extension.

PROCEDURE

up-front neck dissection

RADIATION

radiotherapy

70 Gy in 35 fractions to the macroscopic disease 50 Gy in 25 fractions (if sequential boost) or 56 Gy in 35 fractions (if simultaneous integrated boost) to the elective volumes 66 Gy in 35 fractions to the post-operative region with lymphatic extracapsular extension (Arm B only)

PROCEDURE

Early Salvage Neck Dissection in case of less than cCR (Arm A only)

Early salvage neck dissection in case of residual lymph node disease will be performed based on the response evaluation by MRI and PET/CT performed 3 and 4 months after the end of (chemo)radiotherapy, respectively (and additional diagnostic modalities if clinically indicated by the physician) and not more than 3 weeks after this post-radiotherapy evaluation. In Arm A, a successful early salvage neck dissection without the operation of the primary tumor in case of less than clinical complete response (cCR) will be considered a component of the multimodality treatment and not as a failure.

Sponsors & Collaborators

  • University of Bern

    collaborator OTHER

  • Insel Gruppe AG, University Hospital Bern

    lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

  • Olgun Elicin, MD · Department of Radiation Oncology, Inselspital

Study Design

Allocation
RANDOMIZED
Purpose
TREATMENT
Masking
NONE
Model
PARALLEL

Eligibility

Min Age
18 Years
Sex
ALL
Healthy Volunteers
No

Timeline & Regulatory

Start
2016-12-16
Primary Completion
2025-06-24
Completion
2025-06-24

Countries

  • Switzerland

Study Locations

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Read the full study record

This page highlights key information. For complete eligibility criteria, study locations, investigator contacts, and the full protocol, visit the original record on ClinicalTrials.gov.

View NCT02918955 on ClinicalTrials.gov