ObjectiveTo evaluate the value of primary surgical treatment combined with induction chemotherapy and concurrent chemoradiotherapy in improving the overall prognosis of advanced pharyngeal squamous cell carcinoma.MethodsClinical data of 122 patients with hypopharyngeal quamous cell carcinoma of stages III ~ IV hospitalized at the Cancer Center of Sun YatSen University from June 2003 to Dec 2015 were analyzed retrospectively. After 2 cycles of induction chemotherapy, they were divided into surgical treatment group (surgery+chemoradiotherapy) (n=62) and nonsurgical treatment group (concurrent chemoradiotherapy) (n=60). The clinicopathological parameters, the differences of the therapeutic effect and prognostic factors between the two groups were compared. Spss22.0 statistical software was used for data analysis.ResultsAmong all the enrolled patients, 45 died in 62 of the surgical treatment group and 38 in 60 cases of the nonsurgical treatment group. Univariate analyses showed that tumor differentiation, clinical stage III/IV, and nodal metastasis were independent prognostic factors of hypopharyngeal carcinoma (all P<0.05), and multivariate analyses revealed differentiation (P=0.010) and clinical stage III/IV (P=0.040) retained significance. Stratified analyses of the effective induction chemotherapy group indicated that the 3year and 5year overall survivals (OS) of the surgical treatment group were 93.2％ and 86.0％, and those of the nonsurgical treatment group were 74.3％ and 60.2％. Their differences were statistically significant (P=0.022) .ConclusionFor locally advanced hypopharyngeal squamous cell carcinoma, primary surgical treatment combined with induction chemotherapy and concurrent chemoradiotherapy can't effectively improve the OS and disease free survival (DFS) of patients, but those who are effective in induction chemotherapy show good efficacy and safety, and may benefit from surgical treatment.