There are many types of neck dissections, too many to explain in detail here. Suffice it to say that the only difference is in how much of you is removed with each technique. They can range from just taking lymph nodes and surrounding fatty tissue, to taking muscle mass as well. If you want to see what the area cut looks like, go to my story (people section, founder's story) and you can see it at its worst, and later 5 years healed where it doesn't look too bad. Cervical nodes are the first metastasis (separate from immediate local dispersion of the cancer cells), to tissues outside of the squamous type. They usually are removed as they may harbor micro metastasis of the cancer, that once located in the lymph system, can spread to other remote organs of your body.