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Timothy F. Pingree and colleagues, of the University of Utah School of Medicine, Salt Lake City, recently reviewed 1362 cases of hypopharyngeal cancer and reported an overall five-year survival of 25%. Results of their study, presented at the 1987 Southern Section Meeting of the Triological Society in Santa Fe, NM, also indicated that patients who were treated with surgery alone had a better survival rate than those treated with planned combined therapy or with radiotherapy alone. The data were extracted from the Rocky Mountain Cancer Data System for patients diagnosed between 1973 and 1983. A large majority of the patients (71%) had stage III or IV disease at the time of diagnosis, and 23.9% of them eventually developed distant metastases. There was no difference in outcome for patients who were treated with preoperative radiotherapy vs postoperative radiotherapy. Also, a poor response was noted among patients who had either early or