Between 1994 and 1999, 246 patients have received treatment for oral squamous cell carcinoma at the Tokai University Hospital. Twelve of them were young patients under the age of 40 years.
In this report, we clinically compared these young patients with older patients. In young patients, primary lesions were located mostly in the tongue. The 5-year survival rate was 62.5% in young patients and 74.0% in older patients. However the difference between both groups is not statistically significant, 5 of 12 patients have developed locoregional failure and 4 patients have died from their cancer. This result suggests that the control of tumor during initial treatment is more important for young patients.

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The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between initial symptom, especially subjective one those were almost pain, and recurrence in oral cancers treated with thorough therapy. The object of this study is 50 cases of local or cervical recurrent oral cancers in those had been treated in our hospital since January 1976 to December 2000. Initial symptom was defined the one that had been appeared before the time diagnosed recurrence clinically or pathologically. And these initial symptoms were divided into subjective symptoms and objective ones, to investigate a sort of symptoms and those appeared time. Especially, subjective symptom was be compared the appeared time with control that was 50 cases recognized no recurrence and metastasis. At last, the rate of appearance in subjective symptoms was examined in treatment method and tumor size. As a result of this study, anything of subjective symptom was appeared in 35 cases of 50 cases recurrent oral cancers (70%), and 32 cases of 35 cases complained pain. The time of appearance in subjective symptoms was 44 days on average before the day of diagnosis, it was significantly shorter than the time of objective ones that was before 25 days. The rate of appearance of subjective symptoms in recurrence cases was 70%, which was significantly higher than that of control 14%. The appearance of subjective symptoms did not depended on the method of treatment and tumor size. It was concluded that the subjective symptom, that was almost pain, had no relationship with the method of treatment and tumor size, and the appearance of pain was very helpful to find recurrence tumor early. We reconfirmed it was very important to hear patient's complaints carefully.

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