Under hypoxia, overexpression of HIF‐1α may increase the invasiveness of cancer cells,6 promote distant metastasis7, 8 and facilitate radioresistance.9, 10, 11, 12, 13 In previous studies, we found that HIF‐1α overexpression was associated with lymph node metastasis, T stage and poor outcome in patients with laryngeal carcinoma.14 Here, HIF1A is linked to metastatic malignant neoplasm in the lymph nodes.