Clinicopathological characteristics of oral squamous cell carcinoma in Northern Norway: a retrospective study

Background: The main aim of the study was to evaluate if patients with oral squamous carcinomas in Northern Norway differ from patients in other countries with regard to clinicopathological characteristics and also study the influence of risk factors. Such a comparison is of demographical interest, and also important for the interpretation of result from studies on prognostic biomarkers. Methods: We describe clinicopathological characteristics of 133 North Norwegian patients diagnosed with squamous cell carcinoma of the oral cavity in the period 1986-2002, and evaluate the significance of different risk factors. Results: The cohort consisted of 69 men and 64 women, giving male/female ratio of 1.1. Forty-seven of the 133 patients (35%) died of the disease within 5 years from diagnosis. There was no significant difference between the genders concerning time to disease specific death, even though men both smoked and drank more alcohol than women. As expected, the strongest predictors for disease specific death were tumour size and the presence of regional lymph node metastasis. We also found that heavy smokers and drinkers presented with more advanced disease, more often localized to the floor of mouth compared to non-smoking and abstinent patients, who more often presented with tumours of the mobile tongue. Conclusions: Our results correlate well with previously published clinicopathological data on comparable cohorts, which is important when considering the applicability of results from biomarker studies performed on this material compared to other cohorts, and vice versa.