The literature date estimated that about 5% of all oral cavity cancers are hard palate cancers while soft palate cancers account for about 5-12% of oropharyngeal cancers. Although rare, usually these tumors had a more aggressively behavior than other oral cancer sites. That is why our study aimed to investigate comparatively the epidemiological, clinical and histopathological peculiarities of the two palatal sites of oral squamous cell carcinomas. We conducted a retrospective study limited to a period of 10 years in a single medical institution to investigate the morphoclinical profile of such tumors. We found that patients with hard palate SCCs had an average age slightly larger compared to those who developed soft palate tumors. Also, those with hard palate tumors are mostly diagnosed in less advanced stages compared to those at the level of the soft palate, and implicitly the former had a longer survival time. Histopathologically the most encountered hard palate SCC were the conventional well-differentiated tumor, and from the peculiar SCC variant the papillary and verrucous forms while for the soft palate SCC prevailed the moderate and poor differentiated conventional SCC and from the peculiar SCC variant the basaloid and acantholytic forms. In conclusion hard palate tumors differ in many aspects from those of the soft palate, and thus specification of the origin tumor site become important for the assessment of prognosis, treatment and survival outcome of such patients.
Keywords: Epidemiology; histopathology; oral cavity; palate; squamous cell carcinomas.
Copyright © 2014, Medical University Publishing House Craiova.