Lip Cancer: A Clinicopathological Study and Treatment Outcomes in a 25-Year Experience

Abstract

Purpose There are few clinical studies focusing on treatment outcomes of lip cancer. This study investigated the clinicopathologic variables of a large sample of patients with lip squamous cell carcinoma (LSCC) treated in a reference head and neck cancer center for the past 25 years and analyzed the influence of these variables on treatment outcomes. Materials and Methods This retrospective cohort study reviewed the clinical records of patients with LSCC. Epidemiologic data were age, gender, ethnicity, type of occupation, tobacco smoking, alcohol consumption, comorbid conditions, and family cancer history. Clinicopathologic features included the lip location of the tumor, TNM classification, clinical staging, histopathologic grade, surgical margin analysis, and treatment modality. Local recurrence, second primary tumor, and survival were the outcome variables. Statistical analysis was performed by χ2 test, Fisher exact test, and binary logistic regression analysis. Survival analysis was assessed through the Kaplan-Meier curve. Level of statistical significance was set at a P value less than.05 for all tests. Results In total, 144 patients with LSCC were studied. There were 117 men (81.25%) and 27 women (18.75%) with a mean age of 60.21 years. One hundred thirty-four patients (93.05%) were considered of white ethnicity, and in 57 cases (39.58%), the patients reported an occupation that was related to long-term solar exposure. Most cancers had initial clinical staging of 1 or 2 (84.02%). Microscopically, lesions were predominantly well (43.05%) and moderately (40.96%) differentiated tumors. Clinical staging was related to a specific higher survival rate (P =.0049). One hundred twelve cases (77.78%) underwent surgical treatment and only 6 patients (4.80%) had local recurrence, which was directly associated with compromised surgical margins (P =.0320). Conclusion A high success rate in LSCC treatment was observed in this study. Compromised surgical margin was associated with tumor recurrence and is a critical event in lip cancer treatment.