CASE REPORT article
Front. Oncol.
Sec. Head and Neck Cancer
Branchial Cleft Carcinoma with Cervical Lymph Node Metastasis: A Case Report
Provisionally accepted
- Zibo Central Hospital, Shandong, China
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Branchial cleft carcinoma is a rare malignant tumor originating from the epithelium of branchial cleft cysts, which are highly susceptible to misdiagnosis. There is a lack of systematic consensus on its lymph node metastasis pattern and standardised treatment protocol. We report a case of branchial cleft carcinoma with cervical lymph node metastasis and discuss its diagnostic criteria, clinicopathological features, lymph node metastatic characteristics, and treatment strategies. This case report supports the notion that branchial cleft carcinoma should be diagnosed according to Khafif's criteria, and long-term follow-up is necessary to reduce the misdiagnosis rate. And treatment should be based on radical tumor resection combined with ipsilateral cervical lymph node dissection, and adjuvant radiotherapy is recommended for the presence of lymph node metastasis or locally invasive growth.
Keywords: Branchial cleft carcinoma, lymph node metastasis, Cervical lymph node dissection, Radiotherapy, follow-up
Received: 02 Jun 2025; Accepted: 05 Nov 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Diao, Han, Zuo and Sun. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Fenglin Sun, 18560291825@163.com
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