The aim of this study is to determine the prognostic value of available clinical and histological parameters to predict subclinical nodal metastases and survival. For that purpose we used a modification of the Jakobsson [9] grading system proposed by Richard W. Nason [12] and applied it to a series of patients with oral carcinoma. Correlation between histological parameters and cervical lymph node metastasis were made and the chi-square test showed a strong significant association between mode of invasion, depth of tumor invasion, vascular invasion and cervical metastases. Analysis of overall survival showed that overall survival strongly correlates with cervical node metastases (p=0.0004). We found that overall survival correlates with vascular invasion (p=0.005) and also overall survival correlates with tumour depth (p=0.001). There is a strong relationship between malignancy score and survival (p=0.00001) and a high malignancy score is associated with poor prognoses.
Patients: a total 32 with over 14 points of malignancy score, 25 (78.1%) died and 7 (21.9%) are alive. Analysis of the risk factors for subclinical cervical metastases in patients with oral cancer is important for predicting prognosis and achieving a high survival rate.