Objective: To examine the association between survival and the number of lymph nodes (LNs) examined among persons who underwent surgery for node-negative tongue cancer that was confirmed by pathologic findings.
Methods: Data from the Surveillance Epidemiology and End Results (SEER) database were reviewed (1988-2002). The association between survival and the number of regional LNs evaluated during surgery among patients with tongue cancer was examined by constructing Kaplan-Meier curves. We also used multivariate Cox proportional hazard models to calculate age-, race-, sex-, grade-, and diagnosis year–adjusted hazard ratios (HRs) for different numbers of LNs. In these analyses, a hazard ratio of less than 1.0 indicates increased survival.