Lip cancer: Reconsidering the at-risk patients with pathological assessment.

OBJECTIVES

This study was aimed to overview the treatment protocols of lip cancer and find out a cutoff point of tumor diameter and depth of invasion (DOI) for the survival parameters.

MATERIALS AND

METHODS

One hundred and ninety-one patients with lip SCC were studied.

RESULTS

The average age of the patients was 62 years. Among 191 patients, 82.7% of the patients were men, 96.4% of them had lower lip cancer, and 84% were staged as early (pT1, pT2 ). Primary tumor excision with neck dissection was applied to 62.3% of the patients. Lymph node metastases rate was found to be 11%, and recurrence rate was 6.3%. There was statistically significant difference in between the tumor diameters and DOI values of patients with and without metastasis, and recurrence (p < 0.01, p < 0.05, respectively). Regarding to the lymph node metastasis, the optimal cutoff point was found to be 7.5 mm for DOI and 21.5 mm for tumor diameter. Regarding to the recurrence, the optimal cutoff point was found to be 7.5 mm for DOI and 24.5 mm for tumor diameter.

CONCLUSION

T2 lip cancer patients also seem to be in at-risk group for metastasis and recurrence. As a conclusion, elective neck dissection and frequent follow-up are recommended for these early-stage lip cancer patients.