Mucoepidermoid carcinoma of the oral cavity.

There is presently no uniformly accepted grading system for mucoepidermoid carcinoma, largely due to a lack of consensus as to what criteria should be used to formulate histological grades. The present study was undertaken to determine the relationship between histological grade, clinical stage and survival in these neoplasms. Clinical and histological data from 34 patients with mucoepidermoid carcinoma were reviewed. Mucoepidermoid carcinoma was most common in the parotid gland (44.1%), while 25% of patients had tumors in the minor salivary glands. Low, intermediate, and high-grade neoplasms accounted for 61.7%, 26.5%, and 11.8% of tumors, respectively. There was a general trend towards increasing clinical aggressiveness with increasing histological grade. Similarly, postoperative tumor recurrences were marginally more common in high-grade than in low-grade mucoepidermoid carcinomas. However, both of these findings were statistically insignificant, mainly due to small sample size, late clinical presentation, poor clinical follow-up, incomplete management and incomplete records. These factors explain the relatively low survival figures in the present study, as compared to higher survival figures in white patients with mucoepidermoid carcinoma.