Histopathological prognostic factors of certain primary oral cavity cancers

The TNM classification of cancers arising in the upper aerodigestive tract is a generally useful and widely applied method for estimating prognosis and planning therapy. In two retrospective reviews of patients with oral cavity cancers, we identified additional histopathological characteristics that were significantly related to treatment outcome. A study of 136 patients with squamous cell carcinoma of the anterior tongue (without clinical metastases) demonstrated, in a multifactorial analysis, three factors associated with a high risk of occult metastases: Clinical size of the primary tumor, presence of perineural invasion, and male gender. In a second analysis, of 89 patients with squamous cell carcinoma of the buccal mucosa, many pathologic and clinical parameters were related to prognosis using single-factor analysis. However, in multifactorial analysis only tumor thickness and vascular invasion were predictive of outcome.