Editorial: Oral Oncology: From Precise Surgery to Precision Medicine and Surgery

Oral Oncology: From Precise Surgery to Precision Medicine and SurgeryOral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC) is the most common type of head and neck cancers and represents a significant medical burden worldwide (Coletta et al.).So far, surgical resection followed by appropriate reconstruction remains the first line of therapy for this kind of tumor.Precision, by definition, is the quality of being exact and accurate, and it is recognized as an essential quality of surgical care.Given the importance of achieving complete tumor resection to reach good oncological results, while preserving organ function and quality of life, oral surgery is among the medical specialties that regard precision as one of its most intrinsic qualities, as all procedures should aim to be extremely precise in their target, performance, and postoperative management.This being said, achieving surgical precision, in the sense of a safe resection with function sparing, is often challenging, especially given the variability of clinical presentations of OSCC.The main aim of this Research Topic, entitled "Oral Oncology: From Precise Surgery to Precision Medicine and Surgery", was therefore to cover the multiple facets of surgical and medical precision, highlighting possible strategies to attain personalized, reproducible, and optimized surgical procedures.Altogether, six contributions from all over the world have been included in this special issue.The aim was not to comprehensively list all practical solutions that are becoming increasingly available to oral surgeons, including 3D printing, cutting guides, and virtual surgical planning.Solutions for computer-assisted surgery can be used not only to achieve precise tumor resection, but also to train surgeons and prepare them for complex reconstructive procedures.Virtual surgical planning has a role to play in order to achieve more precise surgical treatment of OSCC, as shown by Crosetti et al. who herein present the results of a retrospective study examining the use and impact of virtual planning for bone resection in 20 patients with locally advanced OSCC. This study, while still preliminary, suggests that satisfactory results can be achieved in oncological terms, with a possible reduction of operative time and functional benefits. Nevertheless, virtual planning remains a difficult exercise as shown by Crosetti et al., who highlight that it is tributary to correct initial tumor staging.With this challenging complexity in mind, Alabi et al. reviewed