摘要： In head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC), neck dissection is part of the surgical therapy. Beyond to the fact that radicality is a critical prognostic factor, this dissection could lead to significant morbidity, potentially avoidable when resected lymph nodes (LN) are proven to be non-invaded at pathology. Therefore, the definition of a method able to reliably identify the specific LN drainage area in HNSCC would represent a relevant progress, to better guide the neck dissection, potentially improving the radicality and reducing the morbidity. As near-infrared fluorescence imaging (NIR-FI) after indocyanine green (ICG) peritumoral injection has been validated as a sentinel procedure, we hypothesized that this approach could represent a new technique to identify the tumor-drainage area in HNSCC. We prospectively evaluated this technique in 14 patients with oral or oropharyngeal carcinoma scheduled for primary tumor resection and LN dissection. The trial was approved by the ethics committee of the Institut Jules Bordet (CE-2178) (EudraCT 2014-000298-37) and all patients signed informed consent before inclusion.