Clinical Research Of The Oral Squamous Cell Carcinoma With The Clinically Lymph Node-negative

Purpose:To evaluate some clinical and pathological factors influencing lymph node metastasis and to determine optimal treatment strategy for patients with clinically lymph node-negative (NO) in oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC)Material and Methods:160 patients with OSCC were retrieved from the department of stomatology in the First Affiliated Hospital of the college of Medicine in Zhejiang University, and all of them had been treated with neck dissection. According to the results of the relationships between the occult metastasis and variables such as age, gender, disease duration, location, size and histopathologic grade, we would decide which treatments should be took. Data were analyzed using SPSS package and Chi-square test.Results:Of 160 patients with oral squamous cell carcinoma with neck lymph node-negative (cNO),45 (28.1%) showed occult metastasis. The highest Occult metastases was detected in 33.9% of the patients with oral tongue cancer, whose incidence was highest (about 35% in our study) in OSCC.2/45 appeared the contralateral cervical lymph node metastasis with incidence 4.4%. And patient's gender, age, duration and disease position had no statistical impact to metastasis (P>0.05), which significantly influenced by the size and histopathologic grade of diseases.Conclusions:Size of the tumor and histopathology were significantly related with lymph node occult metastasis. No statistical relationship was observed between age, gender, disease duration, location and the lymph node metastasis. The incidence of the occult metastasis in larger tumor was higher than the smaller one. In addition, while the size was larger than 1cm, the elective neck treatments should be considered. Due to the metastasis of well differentiated SCC was lower than other differentiated grade, we suggested that those OSCC except well differentiated SCC should be treated with neck selective treatments.