Abstract
[Purpose] In order to clarify prognostic factors of recurrent oral cancer,
[Patients and Methods] In 17 oral cancer patients with their age ranging from 28 to 86 years old, who underwent extensive
resection accompanied by reconstruction for recurrence of a primary oral cancer, correlations between survival rate after salvage
surgery and subsite, T classification and N classification of their initial and recurrent tumors, and time of recurrence were
analyzed by using Kaplan-Meier method and kai-square analysis.
[Results] Tongue cancer (10 patients) was found to have the poorest prognosis among all the subsites, and especially those who
had recurrence within 3 months after previous surgery had extremely poor prognoses; 30% (3/10) of them died without being
discharged from the hospital after salvage surgery, and in 40% of them QOL was remarkably impaired losing their voice and
chance of peroral food intake, etc. While T classification and N classification of initial and recurrent tumors were found to have
no correlations with the prognosis.
[Conclusion] More appropriate and realistic information should be provided to those patients to assist them to make a fully informed
decision prior to surgery.
