[The MRI of the occult cervical metastasis with malignant tumor of the head and neck].
OBJECTIVE
To detect the occult cervical metastasis with MRI so as to find out its diagnostic accurate rate.


METHODS
41 lateral necks(negative by clinical palpation) with malignant tumor of head and neck were examined by MRI before operation and correlated with postoperative pathologic finding.


RESULTS
With MRI evaluation occult cervical metastasis has higher accurate rate(75%), nine of 12 lateral metastatic positive necks were detected on MRI, other three false negative necks were not found, owing to no change of the shape of the metastatic nodes.


CONCLUSIONS
At present, MRI is one of the effective methods evaluating occult cervical metastasis with malignant tumor of head and neck, but it has still a certain limitation.
Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgey, Tongji Hospital, Tongji University, Shanghai 200065, China.
Y F
YF
Gu
W L
WL
Qiu
J C
JC
Luo