Retrospective analysis on prognostic impact of adjuvant chemotherapy in the patients with advanced and resectable oral squamous cell carcinoma

Abstract

Purpose: The effect of adjuvant chemotherapy on oral squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) is unclear mainly because there have been a few studies which evaluate the efficacy of adjuvant chemotherapy. The purpose of this retrospective study was to analyze the efficacy of adjuvant chemotherapy in the patients with advanced and resectable oral SCC.

Methods: 41 patients in whom advanced SCC (stage III and IV) was completely removed were included in this study. The impact of multiple variables including T-classification, degree of differentiation, mode of invasion, number and level of cervical metastatic node, pre-and post-operative radiation therapy, neoadjuvant chemotherapy, and adjuvant chemotherapy on survival and control of local relapse or distant metastasis was assessed using the stepwise Cox proportional hazards model.

Results: The level of neck node metastasis (p<0.02) was a significant independent predictor for cause-specific survival and adjuvant chemotherapy was of borderline significance (p=0.07). The number of neck node metastasis (p<0.01) and adjuvant chemotherapy (p<0.01) were significantly related with disease free survival.

Conclusion: The results of this retrospective study suggested that adjuvant chemotherapy had a significant benefit in improving disease free survival.