[Prognostic factors and clinical classification criteria of oral carcinomas (author's transl)]

The clinical classification of oral carcinomas presents some points still under discussion. In other respects the main questions about the treatment of these cancers could be resolved by cooperative clinical trials which impose the definition of a common clinical language. With a system based on an original computer program for the compiling, store and process essential data on cancer diseases we analyzed 736 consecutive and unselected oral carcinomas and we studied the prognostic value of main clinical factors. In our series, the main prognostic factors are tumor size, clinical appearance of the primary and clinical status of neck nodes. Sex, age and histological grade are unimportant. From our study we propose to complete the TN classification with two useful clinical criteria distinguishing the exophytic or minimally infiltrating tumors from the deeply infiltrating (greater than 1 cm) and the large metastatic omolateral nodes from the small ones (phi less than 3 cm).