Carcinomas of the larynx and hypopharynx present unique challenges when it comes to their assessment and management. Management involves the essential dilemma of optimizing cure rates while also ensuring that potential disability due to compromised airway, voice and swallowing is minimized. Treatment decisions involve careful disease assessment, judicious multispecialty decision-making, and subsequent meticulous implementation of the selected treatment modalities.The critical nature of each of these steps has led to dramatic advances in assessment techniques (radiology, endoscopy and photography, stroboscopy, narrow band imaging, contact endoscopy) and also in treatment methods (radiation therapy, combined concurrent chemo-radiation, combined sequential chemo-radiation, trans-oral CO2 laser and robotic surgery, partial laryngectomy, total laryngectomy, extended total laryngectomy).