SIGNIFICANCE OF SURGICAL MARGINS ASSESSMENT IN ORAL SQUAMOUS CELL CARCINOMA: A SURGEON’S PERSPECTIVE

Sanjeev Tomar* and Upma Tomar

ABSTRACT

Oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC) is the most common malignant tumour of the oral cavity. It can be treated by surgery, radiation therapy, chemo therapy, and sometimes combinations of all these modalities and among all these modalities, surgery is the most accepted line of treatment. The purpose of Cancer surgery is achieving complete resection of the tumour and its success depends on not leaving any residual neoplastic cell. Despite all the recent advances in the diagnosis and treatment of these patients, OSCC is showing increasingly high recurrence rates. The surgical margins (SMs) or resection margins are the margins or boundaries of resection specimen, which is excised by the surgeon. The goal of this review was to evaluate the significance of surgical margins in adequate and proper treatment of HNSCC along with minimum recurrence.

Keywords: Oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC), pattern of invasion, surgical margins (SMs), frozen section, tumour?free margins.