title: Prognostic factors for cancer of the oral cavity.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  A survival analysis was conducted on 101 patients with oral cancer to determine the influence of certain clinical and pathological parameters on survival.
  
  
  METHODS
  Kaplan-Meier analysis and Cox proportional hazard models were used to assess survival and estimate hazard ratios adjusted for potential confounders.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Survival rates were influenced by tumor diameter (P = .030), clinical T (P = .028), clinical N (P = .019), clinical stage (P = .006), lymph node involvement (P = .003) and histologic malignancy grade (P = .0063). The multivariate analysis included only 1 variable, the lymph node involvement. For clinical stage, the mean histologic malignancy grade was 1.71, 2.27, 2.53, and 2.61, respectively, for stages I through IV (r(s) = 0.423, P < .001).
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  This study proposes considering the tumor size as the most significant clinical variable for predicting the survival of oral cancer patients at the time of diagnosis and the degree of lymph node involvement after the treatment.
authors.affiliation: Department of Oral Medicine and Periodontology, School of Stomatology, University Complutense of Madrid, Spain.
authors.forename: Ignacio
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Prieto
authors.forename: Antonio
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Prieto
authors.forename: Manuel
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Bravo
authors.forename: Antonio
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Bascones
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D004812:Epidemiologic Methods; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008207:Lymphatic Metastasis / Q000175:diagnosis; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009062:Mouth Neoplasms / Q000401:mortality* / Q000628:therapy; D037981:Neck Dissection