Abstract
Patients over 80 years old accounted for 7.6% of the total of 670 patients with primary oral squamous cell carcinoma who were treated in our department from April 1998 to March 2011. These elderly patients were clinically investigated and compared with the patients under 80 years old.
These elderly patients consisted of 24 males and 27 females; the ratio of females among patients over 80 years old was significantly higher than that among patients under 80 years old (P = 0.035). The most frequent region of the primary tumor was the gingiva (20 cases: 39.2%), followed by tongue (19 cases: 37.3%). As clinical stage classification, 17 cases were stage I (33.3%), 21 cases were stage II (41.2%), 5 cases were stage III (9.8%), and 8 cases were stage IV (15.7%). Of the patients over 80 years old, 90.9% had systemic disease, and this ratio was significantly higher than that of the patients under 80 years old (P = 0.026). As for the treatment manner, radical treatment was performed for 43 cases (84.3%) and palliative treatment was performed for 8 cases (15.7%), and the ratio of radical treatment among the patients over 80 years old was significantly lower than that among the patients under 80 years old (P < 0.001). The cause-specific 5-year survival rates of the radical treatment group among the patients over 80 years old and those under 80 years old were 79.4% and 82.1%, respectively. The cause-specific 5-year survival rates between these two groups were approximately equal. However, the ratio of deaths due to oral cancer in the elderly patients group was only 52.6%; about half of the patients over 80 years old died of other diseases.
