Relationship between the appearance of tongue carcinoma on intraoral ultrasonography and neck metastasis

Objective To evaluate the usefulness of intraoral ultrasonography (IOUS) as a tool for predicting neck metastasis. Introduction Squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) of the tongue is aggressive and has a great propensity to metastasize to cervical lymph nodes. SCC of the oral cavity has a worse prognosis when associated with metastatic cervical nodes. Therefore, the metastatic potential of tongue carcinoma should be graded preoperatively to help determine the requirement for neck dissection. Methods Nineteen patients (11 men, 8 women) between 36 and 79 years of age (mean age 60) with T1 to T4a TNM-stage tongue carcinomas were evaluated preoperatively with IOUS. Clinical and pathological TNM classifications were performed. Results The average tumor thicknesses measured using histological sections were significantly ( p