Evaluation of the effect of various clinicopathological parameters on prognosis in oral cavity squamous cell carcinomas

Oral squamous cell carcinoma is an aggressive carcinoma that is common in developing countries and its incidence has increased in developed countries in recent years. No significant developments have been achieved in terms of survival in oral squamous cell carcinomas. Despite different treatment strategies, overall survival rates are below 50%. Therefore, there is a need for cost-effective, easily applicable and reproducible histopathologic parameters, that can predict the risk of recurrence and prognosis. In our study, we evaluated the prognostic significance of various parameters such as depth of invasion, tumour budding, tumour infiltrating lymphocytes, tumour-stroma ratio, extranodal extension and lymph node ratio, which have been recently emerged in addition to standard clinicopathological prognostic parameters in 78 cases diagnosed with conventional squamous cell carcinoma in oral cavity between 2005 and 2022. Tumour location, depth of invasion, tumour budding, perineural invasion, T stages, bone and/or skin invasion and extranodal extension were associated with disease free survival. Bone invasion and extranodal extension were identified as independent predictive factors for disease free survival. Age, tumour size, depth of invasion, tumour budding, tumour infiltrating lymphocytes, lymphovascular invasion, perineural invasion, surgical margin status, T stages, bone and/or skin invasion, lymph node metastasis, lymph node ratio and extranodal extension were associated with overall survival. Age, tumour size, bone and/or skin invasion and extranodal extension were independent risk factors for overall survival. Our study has relatively small number of patients. It is required to be supported by studies including larger numbers of patients.