Prognostic potential of CK-19 managing disseminated oral squamous cell carcinomas in Pakistan: A descriptive cross-sectional study.

ABSTRACT

A cross-sectional study was conducted to assess the adoptability of CK-19 as a routine diagnostic assay and potential prognostic marker following disseminated oral squamous cell carcinoma in Pakistani population. The current descriptive study was conducted at Isra Dental College Hospital, Isra University, Hyderabad, Pakistan. Suspected patients of oral squamous cell carcinomas (OSCC), who visited the Isra Dental College Hospital's outpatient department from January 2014 up to January 2015 with four year follow up (from January 2015 up to December 2019), were included after ethical approval of the Institutional board. SPSS version 21.0 was used for data analysis. Sixty cases of oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC) were selected for CK-19 quantification by using PCR before and after incisional biopsy. Of the 60 included subjects, fifty-two (87 %) were male, whereas only 8 were female. The mean age of females was 43.2±21.5years and the mean age of males was 36.14±14.1years. Of the 12 CK-19 positive cases, only seven cases of OSCCs were found positive following four year follow up duration. Our study shows that CK-19 has a positive (20%) prognostic potential for diagnosing disseminated carcinomas (p=0.0001). Before adopting CK-19 as a routine laboratory assay for diagnosing disseminated carcinomas, proper research is required to fulfil existing knowledge gap and standardising clinical and histopathological criteria for disseminating OSCCs in parallel to CK-19 concentration.