Soft tissue deposit in neck dissection specimen carries a poor prognosis in oral cancer: A matched pair analysis

BACKGROUND: Soft tissue deposit (STD) is the presence of tumor foci in the neck at sites other than lymphoid tissue. We evaluated the factors associated with STD and their impact on outcomes. METHODS: The records of 4812 treatment naive oral cancers operated between December 2010 and September 2015 were screened for the presence of STD. A matched-pair analysis was performed to obtain 450 patients without STD. Chi-square was used to test association with clinicopathological factors and hazard ratio (HR) for overall survival (OS) and disease-free survival (DFS) were calculated. RESULTS: STD was present in 0.6% and associated with gingiva-buccal cancers, advanced stage, poor differentiation, presence of extranodal extension (ENE) and higher locoregional/distant metastasis. They had a significantly poorer OS (HR-2.08; P-value .0073) and DFS (HR-2.5; P-value .0002) with and without ENE [HR-1.96 and 3.7, respectively]. CONCLUSION: Despite aggressive adjuvant therapy STD has a significant negative impact on outcomes.