We report herein on 29 patients with advanced oropharyngeal and tongue squamous-cell carcinoma who underwent a total glossolaryngectomy at the Cancer Institute Hospital of the JFCR between July 2005 and June 2013. In this study, we tried to evaluate associations between several variables of the primary tumor and prognosis in these 29 patients. The cause-specific 5-year survival rate with the Kaplan-Meier method was 45% in all patients. Tumor recurrence occurred in 15 patients. Four patients had recurrence in the primary site, 11 patients in neck lymph nodes or in the lungs or bone. The multivariate analysis revealed that the number of neck lymph node metastases, age and alcohol drinking were poor prognostic markers for patients undergoing a total glossolaryngectomy. Cause-specific survival was compared between patients with salvage surgery and initial surgery using Kaplan-Meier survival curves with log-rank tests. There was no significant association with survival (log-rank test: p = 0.13). The overall local control rate was 69% in all patients. Regarding salvage surgery, 9 of 16 patients had no recurrence in the primary site or neck lymph nodes. The limitations of this study include the small number of patients especially regarding the prognosis study and may have included a selection bias regarding undergoing a total glossolaryngectomy.