Surgical excision forms the principal treatment of oral cavity squamous cell carcinomas. The comprehensive surgical management consists of Wide Local Excision of the tumor and Neck Dissection with removal of Submandibular gland. The submandibular gland accounts for 70-90 % of unstimulated salivary volume. Its excision as a part of neck dissection has been found to cause high Incidence (21% vs 7%) of postoperative xerostomia. Recent studies have highlighted that the preservation of the SMG is possible and oncologically safe in early-grade OCSCC with N0 neck as the involvement of SMG in such cases is low and its preservation decreases the chances of xerostomia.
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Rasool et al. (2024) studied this question.
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