Abstract
We evaluated clinicopathological factors in 83 patients with atypical epithelium (AE) around squamous cell carcinomas of the tongue, who were selected from 128 patients (65%; 83/128) with primary Stage I or II carcinomas who underwent local resection without biopsy in our department from 1975 to 2005.
Lesions were re-evaluated by pathological diagnosis of the resected specimen, using the General Rules for Clinical and Pathological Studies on Oral Cancer (1st ed., 2010), and included 35 oral intraepithelial neoplasias (OIN) and 48 oral epithelial dysplasias (OED). Of the 83 cases, 54 (21 OINs, 32 OEDs and a specimen that could not be classified) had AE on their surgical margins. Of these, 22.9% (19/83) recurred and 27.8% (15/54) had recurrence of AE-positive mucosal margins, including 42.9% (9/21) of the OIN cases and 18.8% (6/32) of the OED cases. Mean duration from resection to recurrence was significantly shorter for OIN at 10 months (range: 3-33 months) than for OED at 57 months (range: 46-70 months; P = 0.0015).
We concluded that classifying AE into OIN or OED using the General Rules for Clinical and Pathological Studies on Oral Cancer is helpful in assessing risk of progression to invasive carcinoma, and that OIN should be treated as soon as possible because of its tendency to recur.
