Abstract: Objective:To analyze survival in patients with advanced oral cancer from prospective clinical trials. Methods:From 2008to 2010, 256 patients with oral cancer at clinical stage III/IVA were randomly categorized into two groups. Patients in the experi -mental group received neo-adjuvant chemotherapy, surgery, and post operative radiation, and patients in the control group underwent surgery and post-operative radiation. All patients were routinely followed-up after treatments. Survival was analyzed using Kaplan –Meier method and log-rank test, and differences were considered statistically significant at P value lower than 0.05. Results: Each group was composed of 128 patients. With the median follow-up period of 60months, the 5-year overall survival rate was 61.7% and the disease-free survival rate was 53.9%. The overall survival rate ( P=0.350) and the disease-free survival rate ( P=0.160) were not sig -nificantly different between the experimental and control groups. Patients with positive pathological response to neo-adjuvant chemo-therapy exhibited significantly improved overall survival ( P<0.05). Conclusion: Radical surgery should be emphasized to improve the prognosis of oral cancer. Functional reconstruction could also improve the quality of life and survival of patients. Despite that neo-adju-vant chemotherapy could not improve the survival of patients with advanced oral cancer in entirety, it could benefit patients exhibiting positive treatment responses.