Evaluation of the budding and depth of invasion (BD) model in oral tongue cancer biopsies

It is of great clinical importance to identify simple prognostic markers from preoperative biopsies that could guide treatment planning. Here, we compared tumor budding (B), depth of invasion (D), and the combined scores (i.e., budding and depth of invasion (BD) histopathologic model) in preoperative biopsies and the corresponding postoperative specimens of oral tongue squamous cell carcinoma (OTSCC). Tumor budding and depth of invasion were evaluated in the pre- and postoperative samples from 100 patients treated for OTSCC. Sensitivity and specificity statistics were used. Our results showed statistically significant (P < 0.001) relationship between pre- and postoperative BD scores. There was an agreement between the pre- and postoperative BD model scores in 83 cases (83%) with 57.1% sensitivity (95% CI 39.4 to 73.7%) and 96.9% specificity (95% CI 89.3 to 99.6%). Our findings suggest that the BD model, analyzed from representative biopsies, could be used for the treatment planning of OTSCC.