Abstract
As the aging society is advancing in our country, it is expected that the opportunity to treat oral cancer in elderly patients is increasing. In this report, 64 patients (23 male and 41 female) aged 75 and older with oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC) were clinically evaluated as compared with 60 patients (32 male and 28 female) aged 65-74 years old, and 63 patients (46 male and 17 female) aged 64 and younger with OSCC who were treated at our clinic between 2000 and 2008.
The ratio of Performance Status (PS) grade 0·1 patients in the group aged 75 and older was significantly lower than that in the groups aged 65-74 and those aged 64 and younger. The number of patients aged 75 and older are divided into the radical cure treatment group, palliative treatment group and no treatment group, which accounts for 45 (70.3%), 9 (14.1%), and 10 (15.6%) cases, respectively. The ratio of the radical cure treatment patients in the group aged 75 and older was lower than that in the group aged 65-74. The 5-year cause-specific survival rates of radical cure treatment in the groups aged 75 and older, 65-74 and 64 and younger were 81.3%, 88.6% and 80.9%, respectively. The survival rate of the group aged 75 and older was lower than that aged 65-74. We could not follow up with the patients who underwent no treatment. Therefore, it is necessary to consider a solution to this problem in the future.