Background: New surgical techniques in conservation laryngeal surgery (CLS) have emerged over the past 20 years and now offer a viable "organ-preservation" approach for patients with laryngeal cancer. We review traditional and new CLS procedures and summarize the functional and oncologic outcomes of CLS in both primary and salvage settings.
Methods: We searched the literature by accessing Medline for articles from 1991 to 2007 on primary or salvage surgery (open and transoral) for laryngeal neoplasms.
Conclusion: Our review of the literature suggests that proper selection of patients for CLS can yield long-term local control rates equal to or better than those obtained using radiation-based approaches. We believe that CLS should be directly compared with radiation or chemoradiation to further refine the indications for each kind of treatment in cases of primary and recurrent/refractory laryngeal cancer.