Outcome of Neoadjuvant Chemotherapy on Local Recurrence and Distant

Statement of the problem: neoadjuvant chemotherapy (nch) is controversial in the treatment of oral squamous cell carcinoma (oscc). purpose: the aim of this study was to evaluate the efficacy of nch on oscc prognosis. materials and method: in this retrospective cohort study, 94 patients were studied in two groups. the patients in group 1 received nch before the surgery, and those in group 2 underwent resection without any chemotherapy prior to surgery. the employed nch agents consisted of cisplatin in combination with 5-fluorouracil in two treatment courses. tumor size, lymph node involvement, age, and follow-up time were considered as variable factors of the study. local recurrence (lr) and distant metastasis (dm) were outcomes of the study. results: comparison of lr and dm in various tumor sizes demonstrated no significant difference between the two groups (p> 0.05). analysis of the data did not show any statistically significant difference between the groups for lr in subjects with n0, n1 and n2. each one-year increase in age was associated with 10% increase in the hazard ratio (hr) (hr distance metastasis y/n = 1.10, p= 0.05). in the same analysis, when considering lr as a dependent factor, lr risk in n2 was 3 times more than in n1 (p= 0.02). lr risk in n3 was 5 times more than in n1 [hr local recurrence (p= 0.006). conclusion: based on our results, neoadjuvant chemotherapy with combination of cisplatin and 5-fluorouracil may not improve prognosis of oscc. however, further studies are suggested to assess other neoadjuvant chemotherapy protocols in oscc patients.