Association Between Maxillofacial Carcinomas And Carotid Artery Atherosclerosis And Its Tissue Factor

Objective: To investigate the relationship between carotid artery atherosclerosis and carcinoma of maxillofacial region, and the clinical application of evaluating carotid arteries preoperatively on patients with maxillofacial carcinomas. In addition,to explore the role of tissue factor in patients with maxillofacial carcinomas development of carotid atherosclerotsis.Methods: Part I: Color doppler ultrasonography was randomly performed on 205 patients with maxillofacial tumor, exclusion of neck masses in clinical, vessels of neck region were evaluated,and then the percentage of carotid artery atherosclerosis in all cases was analyzed using statistical package for social sciences 24.0. A Chi-square Test was conducted to test,P value less than 0.05 represented statistically significant difference. Part ?: Between May 2014 and April 2017, pathological sections were performed in the tissues from 15 patients with maxillofacial highly differentiated squamous cell carcinoma (SCC),15 patients with maxillofacial poorly differentiated squamous cell carcinoma and 15 patients with maxillofacial leukoplakia as control randomly, immune-histochemical staining was used to detect the expression of TF. All data were analyzed with statistical package for social sciences 24.0. P value less than 0.05 represented statistically significant difference.Results: Part ?: The average age was 50.9±12.7 years. Out of total 205 patients,65 males and 56 females suffered with benign tumors, 54 males and 30 females suffered with malignant. There was no statistically difference between males and females. Occurrence rate of carotid atherosclerosis in malignant tumor group (48.8%)was higher than that of in benign group(30.6%), the difference was statistically significant (P=0.008). According to the age stratified analysis, under the age of 45, the incidence of carotid atherosclerosis were 10.3% and 11.4% in two groups,respectively, there was no significantly difference (P=0.892).The incidence of carotid atherosclerosis in the patients with malignant tumor (69.1%) was significantly higher than that in benign (41.6%, P=0.023), there was statistically significant difference.Part II: The expression level of TF in leukoplakia was lower than that in both well-differentiated SCC and poorly differentiated SCC (P = 0.000).Conclusions: 1. There was correlation between carotid artery atherosclerosis and carcinoma in the maxillofacial region, color doppler ultrasonography of the neck vessels for the patients with maxillofacial carcinoma maybe necessary and useful, it could provide an important information. Therefore, preoperative and postoperative complications maybe been prevented if preoperative color doppler ultrasonography was recommended.3. Tissue factor may play an important role in the development of carotid atherosclerosis lesions in the patients with maxillofacial malignancies.