Evaluating the Diagnosis of Cervical Lymph Node Metastasis In Oral Squamous Cell Carcinoma by Clinicopathologic Investigation.

Background: The presence of cervical lymph node metastasis stands as a key element for predicting the prognosis of oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC) because it affects both management decisions and survival durations. Materials and Methods: This study evaluated 80 OSCC cases that received treatment at a tertiary care facility during the period from 2020 to 2024 by means of retrospective analysis. The study obtained data about the patient characteristics together with tumor site, size and histological grade, depth of invasion (DOI), perineural invasion (PNI) and lymphovascular invasion (LVI), and clinical nodal status. Surgical neck dissections occurred in every case, and the histopathological analyses received comparison with the clinical assessments. SPSS version 26.0 performed the statistical analysis through which results with P values below 0.05 emerged as significant statistical findings. Results: The tongue was the most affected site with 42.5% of cases, while buccal mucosa followed closely with 31.2% of patients. The histopathological analysis demonstrated that cervical lymph node metastasis existed in 38 patients (47.5%) among the study group. The evaluation revealed significant positive trends between deep invasion beyond 5 mm (P = 0.003) and the presence of PNI (P = 0.012) and LVI (P = 0.007) and nodal metastasis. Clinical palpation evaluation found nodal status correctly in 70% of patients, while it failed to identify the presence of hidden metastases in nine cases (11.2%). Conclusion: Multiple pathological features including deep invasion level and the presence of perineural invasion and lymphovascular invasion prove highly associated with cervical lymph node metastasis in patients with OSCC.