The stage III and IV head and neck cancers involve adjacent soft tissue, cartilage or bony structures. The surgical failures of these advanced cancers occur because of inability to obtain a sufficient margin of resection or to remove microscopic tumor spread at the periphery or microscopic disease in the remaining unremoved neck nodes. In contrast, radiation failures occur centrally, due to hypoxic and radioresistant cancer cells which occur in the poorly vascularized large tumor masses. Therefore advanced head and neck cancers are managed by combined modalities with surgery, radiotherapy or chemotherapy. This is a retrospective study on the results of combined modalities for 43 cases of advanced head and neck cancers at Korea university hospital. The results of the study are as follow ; 1) Among 43 cases, stage III were 21 cases(48.8%), stage IV were 22 cases(51.2%) and 22 cases were in larynx(51.2%), 6 cases in oral cavity(13.9%), and 6 cases in hypopharynx(13.9%). 2) Among 30 cases of planned combined modality, 24 cases were treated by surgery with postoperative irradiation. 3) After closing study, 19 cases were NED(44.2%), 7 cases alive with disease(16.3%). The overall survival rate was 60.5% and failure rate 39.5%. 4) Among 21 cases of recurrence, 5 cases were on the primary site(23.8%), 6 cases on neck node(28.6%), 7 cases on distant metastasis(33.3%). 5) The 2 year and 4 year NED rates were 76.2% and 9.5% in stage III, 50.0% and 0% in stage IV. The overall NED rates were 62.8% and 4.3%. 6) The 3 year and 5 year survival rates were 85.7% and 14.3% in stage III, 63.6% and 4.5% in stage IV. The overall survival rates were 74.4% and 7.0%. 7) After treatment by planned combined modalities, the 3 year survival rate was 50.0% in cases of preoperative irradiation with surgery or chemotherapy with irradiation and the 3 year and 5 year survival rates were 79.1% and 8.3% in cases of surgery with postoperative irradiation.