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Taken together, our data suggest that pathological margins and pathological tumor depth are major independent prognosticators not only for local tumor control, but also for DSS and OS.

BackgroundThe aim of this study was to compare the outcomes of postoperative adjuvant concomitant chemoradiotherapy using two different schedules of cisplatin for patients with high-risk oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC).MethodsFrom Feb. 2008 to Aug. 2010, 55 patients with high-risk OSCC were included in this study. Patients were randomized into treatment groups that either received 100 mg/m2 cisplatin once every 3 weeks (arm A) or 40 mg/m2 cisplatin once per week (arm B). All patients were irradiated with 66 Gy in 33 fractions.ResultsOf the 50 eligible patients, 26 were assigned to arm A, and 24 were assigned to arm B. Both groups of patients received the same mean doses of radiotherapy and cisplatin. However, 88.5% of patients in arm A and 62.5% of those in arm B (p = 0.047) received ≥ 200 mg/m2 of cisplatin in total. The overall toxicity was significantly greater in arm B (p = 0.020), and all of the grade 4 toxicities occurred in patients in arm B.ConclusionsThree-weekly high-dose cisplatin treatment showed higher compliance, and lower acute toxicity compared to weekly low-dose cisplatin treatment.

[18F]FDG PET is more sensitive than SS for detecting bone metastasis in endemic NPC at initial staging, whereas SS can be considered as supplementary in this setting.

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Circulating tumour cells (CTCs) in a blood circulation system are associated with cancer metastasis. The analysis of the drug-resistance gene expression of cancer patients’ CTCs holds promise for selecting a more effective therapeutic regimen for an individual patient. However, the current CTC isolation schemes might not be able to harvest CTCs with sufficiently high purity for such applications. To address this issue, this study proposed to integrate the techniques of optically induced dielectrophoretic (ODEP) force-based cell manipulation and fluorescent microscopic imaging in a microfluidic system to further purify CTCs after the conventional CTC isolation methods. In this study, the microfluidic system was developed, and its optimal operating conditions and performance for CTC isolation were evaluated. The results revealed that the presented system was able to isolate CTCs with cell purity as high as 100%, beyond what is possible using the previously existing techniques. In the analysis of CTC gene expression, therefore, this method could exclude the interference of leukocytes in a cell sample and accordingly contribute to higher analytical sensitivity, as demonstrated in this study. Overall, this study has presented an ODEP-based microfluidic system capable of simply and effectively isolating a specific cell species from a cell mixture.

BACKGROUND.The American Joint Committee on Cancer (AJCC) 2002 staging system (AJCC 2002) suggested that squamous cell carcinoma of the oral cavity (OSCC) with T4b is unresectable. The current retrospective results show that selected T4b patients were resectable with favorable outcomes.METHODS.From January 1996 to December 2000, 103 consecutive untreated T4 OSCC patients (reclassified by AJCC 2002) without carotid artery encasement and skull base extension were eligible for radical treatment. All received head‐and‐neck magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and/or computed tomography (CT) scans before operation. The surgical principles were safety margins of ≥1 cm for primary tumors, modified/radical neck dissections for clinical lymph node‐positive disease, and supraomohyoid neck dissection for lymph node‐negative disease. In all, 95.1% of patients (98 of 103 patients) underwent free‐flap reconstructions. Adjuvant radiotherapy or concomitant chemoradiotherapy was administed to those with pathological T4 (AJCC 1997), cervical lymph node metastasis, or close margins (≤4 mm). Survivals were calculated according to the method of Kaplan and Meier.RESULTS.In all, 58 patients were classified as having T4a disease and 45 were classified as having T4b disease. No statistical difference was observed in the 5‐year local control, neck control, disease‐free survival, and overall survival rates between the T4a and T4b groups. In multivariate analyses, pathologic lymph node status (pN0‐1 vs. pN2) was found to be the sole independent predictor for T4b for local control (P = .012), disease‐free survival (P = .005), and overall survival (P = .008).CONCLUSIONS.Selected T4b OSCC patients were found to be resectable with outcomes that were comparable to those of T4a OSCC patients and may benefit from radical surgery, free‐flap reconstruction, and adjuvant therapy. A pathologic lymph node status of ≥2 was found to be the sole independent predictor for T4b disease in local control and survival. Cancer 2006. © 2006 American Cancer Society.