Age as a determinant of outcomes for patients with oral cancer.

To determine whether survival outcomes of younger patients with oral cavity squamous cell cancer (OSCC) differs from older patients in the US. A retrospective cohort study using data from the Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results (SEER) registry. We studied cases (n=19681) of OSCC diagnosed from 1973 to 1999 and used age cutoffs at 40, 45, 50, and 55 years. Control groups of older patients were retrospectively matched on gender, race, cancer subsite, and stage of disease. Survival was estimated using the Kaplan-Meier method. A propensity score matching produced groups with similar distributions of patient and disease characteristics. Between these matched groups, younger patients had a significantly better five-year survival (age 40: 63.4% vs. 80.6%, p<0.0001; age 45: 59.0% vs. 72.8%, p<0.0001; age 50: 55.5% vs. 67.2%, p<0.0001; age 55: 54.0% vs. 64.3%, p<0.0001). These results confirm recent results using population-based data that suggest better overall survival in younger patients.