Background: Inflammation has traditionally been considered to be one of the hallmarks of cancer, and systemic inflammatory responses have a prognostic value in many solid cancers. The use of inflammation-based prognostic markers along with traditional clinicopathological prognostic markers in oral cavity cancers has not been studied well.
Materials and methods: This is a retrospective study from a prospectively maintained database of patients with oral cancers who were managed in a regional cancer center in south India. The study included patients with squamous cell carcinoma of the oral cavity who were treated with curative intent from January to December 2016.
Results and discussion: Three hundred sixty-one patients met the eligibility criteria and were included in the study. The median age of our patient cohort was 45 years; the male-to-female ratio was 3.7:1. All of the patients underwent curative treatments after a multi-disciplinary board concurrence. Advanced T stage, patients with buccal mucosal cancers and patients who received upfront non-surgical treatments have poorer survival outcomes. The clinicopathological variables that predicted a poorer overall survival in the cohort of patients treated with upfront surgery were advanced T Stage, higher grade, presence of perineural invasion, a higher inflammatory maker, and combination of platelet and neutrophil lymphocyte ratio (COP-NLR).
Conclusion: Our unique study of oral cavity cancer patients with a primary aim of exploring the prognostic significance of the pre-treatment inflammatory markers gave very interesting results. The prognostic significance of COP-NLR and other inflammatory markers in oral cancers need to be further explored. More importantly, our study has clearly reiterated that meaningful long-term survival outcomes in oral cavity cancers can only be achieved with the incorporation of upfront surgery.
Keywords: Carcinoma oral cavity; combination of platelet and neutrophil lymphocyte ratio; neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio; platelet-to-lymphocyte ratio; prognosis.