Since 1978, fourteen patients with squamous cell carcinoma of the upper gum have been treated at the Department of Oral Surgery, Kanazawa University. Among them, from the viewpoint of clinical features and the local relation between a tumor and long-term wearing, seven cases seemed to originate in the mucous membrane, which contacted with an improperaly worn upper denture. In this paper, a retrospective analysis of these cases were performed clinico-pathologocally.
Seven patients consisted of 2 males and 5 females with a ratio of 1: 2.5. There ages of the patients ranged between 67 and 94 with an average age of 79 years. Moreover, 6 of the patients were over seventy years old. Tumor tissue has been found mostly at the unilateral molar gum, and in the palate and maxillary tubercle which were under the denture base. Regarding the complaint, the incidence of tumor formation without pain was higher than that with pain. On the first visit, tumor size in some cases have already locally advanced. Histopathologically, they had low grade malignancy and all of them proved to be well differentiated squamous cell carcinoma. Therefore, none of them showed metastasis formation in the regional lymphonode or in any distant organ.
They had been wearing a wrong denture all day and all night for a long time. This suggested that wearing the wrong denture for a long time is associated with the occurrence of cancer.
