Abstract
Recently, primary treatment for oral cancer has been generally established with improvements in the therapeutic outcome. However, the outcome of treatment for recurrence must be improved to further improve the therapeutic results. In this study, patients who underwent salvage surgery for local (primary region) or regional (neck region) recurrence of oral cancer after radical treatment were evaluated. The subjects were 381 patients who underwent radical surgery or achieved CR by chemoradiotherapy or radiotherapy performed as radical treatment at our department between January 1999 and December 2012. Local or regional recurrence was noted in 87 of the 381 patients with a recurrence rate of 22.8%. Recurrence was observed only in the primary region in 57, only in the neck region in 15, and in the primary region and in the neck region in 8, and recurrence in the primary region was accompanied by neck metastasis in 7. Salvage surgery was performed in 45 (51.7%) of the patients with recurrence. In the patients who underwent salvage surgery, the 3-year survival rate was 71.3%, and 3-year re-recurrence rate was 30.1%. A period from initial treatment to recurrence (disease-free interval) of 12 months or longer was a favorable prognostic factor. Since relatively good outcomes were obtained by surgery in recurrent cases, indications for surgery should be evaluated with sufficient consideration of these results.
