Evaluation of the Correlation between CD44, Tumor Prognosis and the 5-Year Survival Rate in Patients with Oral Tongue SCC

Introduction: 90% of the tumors in the head and neck are squamous-cell carcinomas (hnscc), which have overall 5- year survival rate between 50% -60%. cd44 has been shown to be associated with the prognosis. materials and methods: biopsy specimens of 51 patients with oral tongue scc were evaluated by immunohistochemistry (ihc) for the cd44 antibody. results: there was no significant correlation between cd44 and survival (p=0.77), age (p=0.4), cd44 and lymph node metastasis (p=0.87), sex (p=0.947), smoking (p=0.287) and tumor size (p=0.813). however, there was significant correlation between smoking and survival. conclusion: there are widespread discrepancies among the findings in the literature regarding the prognosis of cd44 expression in ocscc. our study shows that the expression of cd44 is not a marker of aggressive behavior in oral tongue scc. consequently, cd44 cannot be considered as handy tool to establish the tumor behavior, prognosis and 5- year survival rate of these tumors.