Surgery with post operative radiotherapy (PORT) had been the mainstay of treatment for advanced laryngeal-pharyngeal cancers (ALHC) until the eighth decade of the past century. Total laryngectomy with post-operative radiotherapy (TL + PORT) used to result in permanent tracheostomy and loss of speech.

Early trials like the VA or European Organisation for Research and Treatment of Cancer (EORTC) trials compared surgery with post-operative radiotherapy to induction chemotherapy (ICT) and radiotherapy (RT). Subsequent attempts have been focused on the added benefit of including concurrent chemotherapy. There is no randomized trial available in the literature comparing concurrent chemoradiation with the standard treatment, i.e. surgery followed by radiotherapy. However, most of the studies comparing neoadjuvant chemotherapy and radiotherapy reported better locoregional control rates and better survival rates with surgery followed by post-operative chemotherapy. Further, the advances in primary voice rehabilitation have substantially improved the quality of life after laryngectomy. Thus, there is a strong case for comparing the results of concurrent chemo-radiation with surgery and post-operative radiotherapy in a randomized clinical trial. This trial will answer the question - "whether we are saving voice at the cost of life".

The investigators propose to randomize 900 patients of laryngeal and hypopharyngeal cancers in surgery with PORT and a concomitant chemoradiation arm and compare the survival and locoregional control rates.