Dhruv Patel*, Elroy Saldanha, Bonny Joseph, Sandeep Ghosh, Vinod Dhakad and Sanjay Desai
Oral Squamous Cell Carcinoma (OSCC) is a common malignant head and neck tumor. The mainstay treatment of OSCC is surgery-centered multimodality therapy. Reconstructive surgery is always needed to restore the oral function after ablative surgery. Role of NACT in the treatment of head and neck cancers is still controversial. In this study, we retrospectively reviewed a group of patients with locally advanced but resectable OSCC in a single cancer center. A total of 32 patients who received NACT followed by surgery and 35 patients who underwent surgery without NACT were included in this study. No statistically significant result noted within demographic characteristics, pathology differentiation, site except buccal mucosa (p value=0.04), clinical T4a stage, N stage, positive surgical margins, mandibular preservation rate, skin and RMT involvement and facial edema. 12 out of 32 (37.5%) patients who received NACT were good responders including two patients (6.2%) had a Complete Response (CR) and 20 patients (62.5%) had a PR. NACT doesn’t influence on choice of surgery because all patients had undergone radical surgery. Kaplanâ €“Meier analysis showed no statistical difference between two groups (p-value: 0.159) with no difference in hazard function, which remain 1.00 at 1-yr. Patients in the non-NACT group had a statistically better RFS (median 11 months with 95% CI 9.17-12.82) than the patients in the NACT group (median 8 months at 95% CI 6.42-9.57). So, if OCSCC is resectable than resect primarily.
