2018 Volume 67 Issue 1 Pages 41-47
Malignant tumors occur during pregnancy in about 1 in 1,000-1,500 cases and reports of oral and maxillofacial cases are rare. Here, we report a case of tongue cancer that occurred during pregnancy. The patient was a 35-year-old woman with a chief complaint of pain in the tongue. She was 9 weeks pregnant and her general condition was good. The oral examination revealed a 15mm elastic hard mass with erosion and a 20mm white lesion. The clinical diagnosis was tongue squamous cell carcinoma （T2N0M0）. Partial glossectomy was performed under general anesthesia at 11 weeks. Delayed neck metastasis appeared in the submandibular lymph node 5 months post-surgery. Modified radical neck dissection was performed at 34 weeks of pregnancy with monitoring via a nonstress test by an obstetrician-gynecologist. The pathological diagnosis of the lymph nodes was pN2b with extracapsular metastasis. She delivered a healthy baby girl weighing 2,805g by Caesarean section. Chemoradiotherapy with 59.4Gy of radiotherapy and cetuximab was additionally performed 9 weeks post-surgery. Two years after treatment, she remains healthy with no recurrence or metastasis.
