Histological and histochemical studies of oral cancer.

Increasing attempts are now being made to measure and to assess the relative importance of histologic features in oral premalignant and malignant conditions in order to improve the accuracy of diagnosis and prognosis. Though certain individual features, such as DNA content of cell nuclei, or stereological parameters like nuclear : cytoplasmic ration or desmosome density can be very accurately quantified, no single feature can completely characterize the neoplastic process. Multifactorial studies are thus of great importance, even though it is not practicable to measure all the parameters included with the sam accuracy; in such studies retrospective computation of the relative importance of individual parameters is of greater value than arbitarily assigned weights. So far as early prediction of malignant transformation in oral premalignant lesions is concerned, great interest is now being shown in the reactivity of glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase in epithelial cells. For predicting the prognosis of patients with established squamous cell carcinoma of the mouth, it is now realized that thenature and intensity of the host immune inflammatory response seen in the connective tissue within the surrounding the tumour and in affected regional lymph nodes, is at least as important as are the features of the tumour cells themselves.