Squamous cell carcinoma of the oral cavity: a retrospective analysis of treatment and prognosis.

A retrospective study of 267 patients with an oral cavity squamous cell carcinoma is presented. It includes all patients from a geographically well-defined area during an 11 and one-quarter year period. Thirty-five percent of the patients were treated with radical surgery, 40% with curative-dosage radiotherapy and 22% with combined therapy. One-year survival with No Evidence of Disease (NED) was 48%. Almost all recurrences were within the first year following completion of the initial treatment. Treatment results were especially ineffective in large local tumour cases (T3 and T4) and in instances with extensive regional lymph node metastases (N2 and N3). The observed 5-year survival ('crude survival') was 44%. All parameters for the course of disease following diagnosis and treatment were significantly correlated to disease stage.