Surgical outcomes in cases of postoperative recurrence of primary oral cancer that required reconstruction

[Purpose] In order to clarify prognostic factors of recurrent oral cancer,[Patients and Methods] In 17 oral cancer patients with their age ranging from 28 to 86 years old, who underwent extensiveresection accompanied by reconstruction for recurrence of a primary oral cancer, correlations between survival rate after salvage surgery and subsite, T classification and N classification of their initial and recurrent tumors, and time of recurrence were analyzed by using Kaplan-Meier method and kai-square analysis. [Results] Tongue cancer (10 patients) was found to have the poorest prognosis among all the subsites, and especially those whohad recurrence within 3 months after previous surgery had extremely poor prognoses; 30% (3/10) of them died without being discharged from the hospital after salvage surgery, and in 40% of them QOL was remarkably impaired losing their voice andchance of peroral food intake, etc. While T classification and N classification of initial and recurrent tumors were found to have no correlations with the prognosis. [Conclusion] More appropriate and realistic information should be provided to those patients to assist them to make a fully informed decision prior to surgery