RESUMO
Surgical resection with adequate margins is an essential component of the treatment for patients with oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC). A distance of 5 mm or more between healthy tissue to the tumor front is generally accepted as a safe margin. It is very important for surgeons to precisely evaluate the resection area of tumor both pre- and intra-operatively and try to achieve a safe margin, which will result in a decreased risk of local recurrence. The relationship of surgical margin status to patients' prognosis, and factors which will affect surgical margin distance demand are discussed in this paper. We recommend that adequate margins evaluation should take consideration of many factors such as anatomical location, depth of tumor invasion, pattern of tumor invasion, mucosal dysplasia grade and so on. With the development of molecular biology, surgical margin study at molecular level can give us a new strategy to evaluate its adequacy.