It has no value in determining treatments. So from those doctors perspective it doesn't mean much. The few institutions that have stopped doing neck dissections as a change in treatment protocol, MAY be right that it isn't needed, but in my opinion and in the opinion of lecturers that I listed to, this is a fuction of staging to do it or not, and less influenced by HPV status. Even with a low staging, it is too early to tell if this is a good idea or not, we'll know in 5 years. Ditto the very small survival advantage. The data on that is at 5 years. It remains to be be seen if that advantage still exists at 10 years. The treatments kill the cells, and by extention, anything that they contain like a virus for instance. But that does not mean that it kills a virus that may be located dormant or active in any other part of your body. We are seeing HPV positive paitents develop second HPV positive primaries in areas far removed from their original lesion. Cervical cancer patients developing an oral cancer, or an oral cancer patient developing an anal cancer. These are all possible indicators that the virus has some mechanism (unknown at this time) of moving around the body. The issue of whether or not the virus can be dormant in your body for protracted periods of time is still an unknown at this time, with different people expressing very different opinions based solely on best guess probabilities, those based on the behavior of other viruses. The clinical value as a determiner of treatment or a prognosticator of LONG TERM survival advantage, of a patient's HPV status, at this time is unknown.