Oral cancer—pertinent papers 2004–2006: A personal view

Abstract

Section 1: Salivary gland malignancyda Cruz Perez DE, de Abreu Alves F, Nobuko Nishimoto I, de Almeida OP, Kowalski LP. Prognostic factors in head and neck adenoid cystic carcinoma.Oral Oncol2006;42:139–46.We aimed to analyse the clinical, histological, and immunohistochemical prognostic factors of a large series of adenoid cystic carcinoma, using univariate and multivariate survival analyses. All patients with adenoid cystic carcinoma of the head and neck (n = 129) treated in a single hospital in Brazil between l955 and l977 were selected for the study. Univariate analysis showed that age over 45 years (p = 0.04), duration of complaints of <l8 months (p = 0.007), paraesthesiae (p = 0.04), T stage (p = 0.01), N stage (p = 0.04), M stage (p < 0.001), clinical stage (p = 0.003), solid histological type (p < 0.001), presence of residual tumour (p < 0.001), and expression of p53 (p = 0.08) all correlated with a poor prognosis. In the multivariate analyses, clinical stage, solid histological subtype, and increased expression of p53 were independent significant prognostic factors; clinical stage, solid growth pattern, and expression of p53 were the most important prognostic factors in patients with adenoid cystic carcinoma of the head and neck.CommentThis was one of several papers about prognostic markers in malignant salivary gland disease that was published recently. One of the reasons I highlighted it was that it suggested there were some factors that were related to long-term prognosis. This tumour has a poor long-term prognosis but it also generates a cohort of patients who can survive with both local, regional, and metastatic (particularly pulmonary metastatic) disease for some time. There may well therefore, be some element of molecular biology that could be managed by further investigation; this follows in the next two articles.Aslan DL, Oprea GM, Jagush SM, Gulbahce HE, Adams GL, Gaffney PM, Savik K, Pambuccian SE. c-kit expression in adenoid cystic carcinoma does not have an impact on local or distant tumour recurrence.Head Neck2005;27:1028–34.Background: Adenoid cystic carcinoma is a neoplasm that behaves unpredictably with frequent late relapses, and which lacks good prognostic indicators. C-kit tyrosine kinase oncogene has recently been found to be expressed in adenoid cystic carcinoma. The aim of this study is to correlate the expression of c-kit in adenoid cystic carcinoma with clinical follow-up.