Background: Alveolar ridge squamous carcinomas develop in patients outside the usual constellation of risk factors.
Objective: To determine whether the use of dentures was a risk factor specific to patients with alveolar ridge carcinoma.
Design: Case-control method with a unique control group-a concurrent cohort of patients with head and neck cancer with primaries in the oropharynx, hypopharynx, and larynx.
Setting: Tertiary care hospital-based clinic.
Patients: Forty-one patients with squamous carcinomas centered on the maxillary or mandibular alveolar ridges. The control group was 175 concurrently seen patients with squamous carcinomas of the laryngopharynx for whom dental status was known.
Main outcome measures: Age at diagnosis, sex, tobacco use, alcohol use, and denture use.
Results: Patients with alveolar ridge were more likely to be female, older, nonsmokers, and nondrinkers. The crude odds ratio of denture use in patients with alveolar ridge cancer was 2.28 (P=.03). Eliminating other confounding factors with logistic regression, the adjusted odds ratio dropped to 1.30 (P=.59). Among patients with alveolar ridge, smoking status correlated with age and gender: current smokers were on average 64.4 years old and 9 of 16 were men. Nonsmokers' average age was 79.1 years and 1 of 11 was a man.
Conclusions: In this study, denture use was not an independent risk factor for alveolar ridge carcinomas. Among patients with little to no tobacco or alcohol exposure, the alveolar ridge carcinomas tended to occur in the elderly and in women.