Does the use of intraoperative frozen section of bone marrow from the cut end of the mandible help assess the adequacy of bone margins following mandibulectomy for oral cancer?

BACKGROUND: The adequacy of the cut end of the mandible following a segmental mandibulectomy done for oral cancer intraoperatively is at times assessed using a frozen section (FS) of the bone marrow (BM) at the cut ends. The study aimed to assess its utility to guide the intraoperative decision on the adequacy of bony margins. MATERIALS AND METHODS: All patients with oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC) who underwent segmental mandibulectomy from January 2012 to December 2021 at our institute and for whom intraoperative FS of BM was utilized were included. We analyzed the sensitivity, specificity, and positive and negative predictive value (PPV, NPV) of this in predicting positive bone margins. RESULTS: A total of 457 patients were included in the study. The majority of the cases were per premium cases (n = 372, 81.4%). The median age of the cohort was 52 years (range: 22-80 years). Most patients had T4 disease (n = 406, 88.8%). On FS, BM was positive in only 18 patients (3.9%) for whom the bone margin was revised. BM biopsy report in the final histopathology was positive in 12 patients (2.2%). The sensitivity, specificity PPV, and NPV were 52.3%, 98.65%, 64.7%, and 97.7% respectively. No factors predicting BM positivity on FS could be identified in this cohort. CONCLUSIONS: The BM FS was positive in only a small percentage of patients, and it helped in reducing the bone margin positivity rate from 3.9% to 2.2% only. Hence the intraoperative BM FS seems to have limited utility as seen from our study.

A Prospective Study to Evaluate the Role of Narrow Band Imaging and Toludine Blue in the Screening of Premalignant and Malignant Lesions of the Oral Cavity in a Tertiary Referral Centre.

In India cancer patients come at a very advanced stage with many of them being crossed the stage of resection. A wide range of non invasive techniques like toludine blue staining, methylene blue staining, Narrow band imaging have been developed for the early detection of malignant and premalignant lesions in the mucosa including oral cavity and gastrointestinal tract. However it is difficult for the clinicians to decide which diagnostic tool is most appropriate and useful for screening, resulting in failure to pick up the lesions at an early stage. Various online journals have been reviewed and no journal was found to support this point. This study here by describes Toludine blue and narrow-band imaging (NBI), diagnostic tools already proven independently as a useful screening method in many fields, and demonstrate its usefulness in the early detection of premalignant and malignant lesions of the oral cavity, as reported by previous studies in the otolaryngologic literature and compare both screening tools which has not been done till now. This study was done in a tertiary referral centre in middle India from March 2018 to August 2019 in order to evaluate the role of different screening tools (NBI and Toludine blue).44 patients with suspicious oral cavity lesions (premalignant and malignant) who had given consent for both NBI and toludine blue screening techniques were selected from the suspected (premalignant and malignant lesions) who had visited the OPD during the study period. Patients with proven malignancy were excluded from the study. A detailed history of the patient taken and standard Ear, nose, throat, oral cavity and neck examination of patient carried out. After subjecting the patients to screening tools like NBI and toludine blue, the efficacy of these techniques in helping us to take a representative biopsy was evaluated. In present study the sensitivity (to correctly identify all patients with disease), specificity (to correctly reject healthy patients without disease) of older technique toludine blue in detecting premalignant lesion was 66.6%, 87.8% while for NBI was 66.6%, 95%. For malignant lesion sensitivity and specificity of toludine blue was 94.3%, 100%, while the same for NBI was 100%, 88.8% respectively. Both NBI and toludine blue staining can be adopted for screening and the accurate detection of biopsy site and in the follow up of premalignant lesions to look for malignant transformation. Time tested is Toludine blue which is cheap and easily available. But being a better tool and having an upper hand in evaluating the lesions, NBI should be made available in all the secondary and tertiary care centres as a screening method.