Deepak Gupta, Associate Director and Senior Consultant at Medanta Hospital, shared on LinkedIn:
“Recurrence patterns in oral cavity cancer.
Indian data from a tertiary cancer center(Medanta).
Even with modern multimodality treatment, up to half of oral cavity cancer patients experience recurrence.
A new prospective cohort study of 134 stage III/IV patients (54-month median follow-up) sheds light on where and why treatment fails:
Key findings:
- ~40% of patients failed treatment – mostly locoregional (in-field), not at treatment margins
- Zero marginal failures – a strong endorsement of modern high-precision radiotherapy planning
- 1 in 4 failures were second primaries in head and neck – underscoring the need for lifelong surveillance
- 5-year disease-free survival: 56%
Strongest predictors of worse outcomes: higher pathologic N stage, perineural invasion, extranodal extension, and tobacco chewing habit.
Takeaway: Tobacco cessation, vigilant pathologic risk assessment, and meticulous target delineation remain central to improving outcomes in oral cavity cancer.
Gupta et al., ‘Reports of Practical Oncology and Radiotherapy’ (2026) – open access.”
Other articles from Deepak Gupta on OncoDaily.