Staging and Outcome of Oral Cavity Cancer: Early Stage and Late Stage Disease

Oral cavity carcinoma management always requires the involvement of a multidisciplinary team. Surgery is the mainstay of treatment, although other therapeutic modalities such as chemotherapy and radiotherapy are often needed in a multimodal treatment approach. Accurate staging is of great importance to better define the best therapeutic strategy, in addition to specific pathologic characteristics, tumor location, and patient-specific considerations. Guidelines help the clinicians in defining the best treatment plan. These guidelines define 2 major groups of patients, early stage and late stage disease, for which they provide specific algorithms/flow charts for an updated evidence-based decision-making process.