Objectives: Description of clinical characteristics of stage III-IV oral tongue cancer treated by neoadjuvant chemotherapy before surgery and/or radiation. Patients and methods: 117 oral tongue cancer patients were treated by neo-adjuvant and/or radiation in K hospital and Ha Noi medical university hospital from 1/2002 to 10/2010. Retrospective descriptive study. Results: Mean of age 49,65 + or - 8,59, most frequent age was older than 40 years (83,8 percent). Male/female 4,3/1. The main reason for admission was local manifestation: tongue tumor, tongue ulcer and pain. The tumor site was common at lateral border of the tongue (82,1 percent), ulcerated protrude and protrude lessions were most frequent. Tumor size less than 4 cm accounted for 54,7 percent
tumor size bigger than 4 cm 45,3 percent
average size 4,2 + or - 1,0 cm. Mouth floor invasion 51,3 percent
tongue root invasion 22,2 percent. 54,7 percent had clinical cervical lymph node, lymph nodes sized smaller than 3 cm 53,2 percent, patients having only 1 lymph node 71,8 percent
more than 2 lymph nodes 18,2 percent
submandibular and submental lymph nodes 73,4 percent
level II lymph nodes 31,3 percent. T2 patients 9,4 percent
T3 29,9 percent
T4 60,7 percent. Stage III 27,4 percent, stage IV 72,6 percent. Conclusion: Oral tongue cancer was common at the age older than 40 years-old. The common clinical manifestation was tongue tumor and pain. The common tumor site was lateral border of the tongue and the most frequent tumor type was ulcerated protrude and protrude. Cervical lymph node metastase was early and the most frequent group was submandibular, submental one.