Introduction:
Oral malignancy is the most common tumor in Pakistan. The age of the more significant part of the patient reaches somewhere in the range of 50 and 70 years, and old age is an indirect risk factor for malignant growths. It is challenging to treat older patients with oral squamous cell carcinoma due to poor performance, adjusted physiology, and additional comorbidities that may influence the decision of surgery and adjuvant treatment whenever scheduled. Above mentioned factors in an elderly group might affect the option of treatment and may vary from the ideal treatment. We aim to evaluate the association of age with the depth of invasion and to assess the association of age with extracapsular spread and risk factors in patients with oral cancer.
Material/ Methods:
This is a retrospective study. Total 360 patients underwent surgery from 2011 to 2017, of which 260 patients fulfilled the inclusion criteria for our research. The chi-square test was applied to check the association between ages with a depth of invasion of the tumor.
Results:
260 patients underwent treatment for oral cancer. It was subdivided into three age groups, and multiple addictions are most common in every age group 51% (n=133). Most of the patients had final stage III and IVA with 31% (n=80) and 35% (n=92). Age has a significant association with the depth of invasion, about 56% (n=144) has >10mm depth of invasion of a tumor with 95% of CI (P-value=0.01). There was no extracapsular spread in 82% (n=214) and yes in 18% (n=46) of the patients with 95% of CI (p-value= 0.149), which was insignificant in patients with oral cancer.
Conclusion:
This study shows that oral cancer has increased depth of invasion in the younger population compared to the elderly population. There is no association between age and extracapsular spread in patients. The majority of patients were found to have moderately differentiated oral cancer.