Background: The impact of submandibular gland (SMG) preservation during neck dissection on the survival of patients with early-stage oral squamous-cell carcinoma (OSCC) remains undocumented.
Methods: The medical records of all patients with early-stage OSCC (stage I and II) who underwent wide excision of the primary tumor and simultaneous neck dissection between 1999 and 2006 at our facility were retrospectively reviewed.
Results: We analyzed 408 patients, including 33 patients with and 375 patients without SMG preservation. The 5-year disease-free and overall survival rates were 78.8% and 90.9% for the patients with SMG preservation and 75.4% and 90.4% for the patients without SMG preservation, and these differences were not statistically significant (P = 0.79, P = 0.99, respectively). Similar survival rates between patients with and without SMG preservation were observed in those with oral tongue squamous-cell carcinoma (SCC) and with buccal SCC. Patients with T2 OSCC with SMG preservation had significantly lower 5-year disease-free survival rate than those without SMG preservation (P = 0.02), but overall survival rates were similar between these two groups.
Conclusions: Preservation of the SMG during neck dissection may be oncologically safe in patients with T1 OSCC, but the feasibility of SMG preservation seems less clear for T2 OSCC.