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Updated: Mar 12, 2026

Intraoperative Assessment of Resection Margins in Oral Cavity Cancer: This is the Way
Published on: May 10, 2021
Retrospective Outcome Analysis of 39 Patients Who Underwent Lip Surgery for Cutaneous Carcinoma
Alice Guyon1, Romain Bosc1, Frederic Lange1
1Department of Plastic, Reconstructive and Aesthetic Surgery, Henri Mondor Hospital, 51, avenue du Maréchal de Lattre de Tassigny, 94000 Créteil, France ; UPEC, University Paris Est Creteil, Val de Marne, France.
Purpose:
The treatment of lip carcinomas needs tumor surgical resection with safety margins respect. The aim of this study was to report the oncologic and aesthetic/functional outcomes of a retrospective monocentric case series of 39 patients treated for cutaneous lip cancer.
Methods:
This retrospective study assessed 56 patients who were treated for a lip carcinoma between 2008 and 2012 and included 39 patients with cutaneous lip basal cell carcinoma or squamous cell carcinoma. Clinical, surgical and pathological data were reviewed, and patients were interviewed for follow-up data. A comparison was made between the marked surgical margins and the margins observed under microscopy after histologic process.
Results:
The most frequent tumor type was basal cell carcinoma in 69.2 %. The measured surgical margins were superior to the histological margins in 24 cases (61.5 %) and were inferior in 13 cases (33.3 %). Overall survival and recurrence-free survival rates at 1 year were 97.5 and 95 % respectively.
Conclusion:
Differences between the surgical margins and the final histologic margins were the main finding of this retrospective study. These differences were attributed to surgical practices and modification during the histological process. Nevertheless, we did not observe a higher rate of recurrence or death in our study than in literature.