To find out whether surgical margins and nodal metastasis are prognostic factors in oral squamous cell carcinoma.
PubMed search was done to look for studies done on surgical margins and nodal metastasis of oral squamous cell carcinoma from the year 2008 to 2018.
Fixed effects meta-analysis showed a pooled estimate absolute risk reduction of -3% (95% confidence interval (-8, 2.5%). p = 0.2819 from the fixed margin model shows no significant difference between close margins with cases of deaths due to recurrence or metastasis. The pooled odds ratio was 0.87 (95% confidence interval 0.63–1.99, p =0.3928) for the comparison between clear and closed margins for estimating the odds. It should be noted that the mean unweighted local recurrence rate for margins 5 mm or greater was 4.9% with 95% CI as (-10.7%, 0.8%).
The study shows that close surgical margins with nodal metastasis have poor prognosis in oral squamous cell carcinoma; however, no statistical significance was seen in this meta-analysis.