Objective: Laryngeal cancers are potentially treatable malignancies on condition that the diagnosis is made and the treatment is started at an early phase. Computed tomography has a very important role in preoperative staging and evaluation of laryngeal cancer, beside clinical examination. In present study, we tried to determine the reliability of computed tomography in assessing the laryngeal regions which affect the tumour stage, prognosis and therapy planning.

Material and Method: This retrospective study included 43 male patients who were operated at ENT department between June 2007 and September 2012 due to laryngeal squamous cell carcinoma.

Results: The sensitivity, specificity, positive-predictive value, negative-predictive value and accuracy ratios of computed tomography in detecting anterior commissure invasion were 60%, 72.2%, 75%, 56.5%, and 65.1%, respectively. The sensitivity, specificity, positive-predictive value, negative-predictive value and accuracy ratios of computed tomography in detecting thyroid cartilage invasion were 71.42%, 86.66%, 83.33%, 68.42%, and 76.74%, respectively. The sensitivity, specificity, positive-predictive value, negative-predictive value and accuracy ratios of computed tomography in detecting subglottic region invasion were 88.23%, 92.59%, 96.15%, 93.59% and 95.34%, respectively.

Conclusion: Although, computed tomography plays a very important role in the evaluation of deep laryngeal structures, it also has a serious risk of wrong staging when used alone.