Abstract

Lip squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) represents between 10 and 20% of all oral cavity cancer. Surgical treatment is the gold standard approach. The objective of this study was to evaluate the impact of staging and intervention on relapse outcomes in patients with lip SCC at Instituto Português de Oncologia de Coimbra. In this study we employed Fisher’s exact test to analyse associations between relapse patterns, staging and intervention. Additionally, Kaplan–Meier survival analysis and Cox regression were used to compare metastasis-free survival across staging, accounting for age of diagnosis. 55 patients were included in this study, with a follow-up of 12 months. We found that metastasis occurrence has a statistically significant association with initial staging. No such association was found with intervention type. Survival analysis confirmed that metastisation occurred earlier and more frequently in higher stages. Lip SCC prognosis is highly dependent of staging at diagnosis, with favourable outcomes at early stages and worse in advanced disease. Initial staging emerged as the primary predictor of metastasis risk. The high occurrence of metastasis in T-stage II lip SCC may indicate that these lesions should be approached as oral cavity cancer.

Keywords

• lip cancer
• oral cancer
• squamous cell carcinoma
• lymphatic metastasis
• TNM staging

References

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Categories

• Head and Neck Oncology
• Craniofacial Surgery

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