Microscopic aspects of angiogenesis and lymphangiogenesis in oral squamous cell carcinoma.

Despite various great scientific and financial efforts, head and neck carcinomas represent a public health problem, being the eighth cause of cancer death worldwidely. The rate of tumor growth, its local expansion, as well as the metastasis of cancerous cells depend on the tumor vascularization, on the ability of blood vessels to provide a constant supply of nourishing substances and oxygen and to eliminate the residual products resulted from tumor growth. That is why angiogenesis and lymphogenesis are considered to be essential processes within the neoplastic process. The assessment of tumoral neoformed blood vessels in oral squamous carcinomas, using the CD34 antibody, showed a significant growth of the microvascular density, the average number being 504.66±177.65 vessels/mm². The diameter of angiogenesis vessels varied between 3.42 and 121.27 µm. The density of lymphogenesis vessels was 508.78±235.93 vessels/mm², while the diameter varied from 2.82 to 165.28 µm. Both angiogenesis and lymphogenesis vessels were more numerous in the areas where the inflammatory infiltrate was more abundant, which suggests that chronic inflammation plays the part of a promoter factor of neoplastic lesions.

Squamous cell carcinoma of the oral cavity: clinical and pathological aspects.

Oral cavity cancer is a public health problem as the sixth leading cause of cancer worldwide. Most tumor lesions are detected in stage III and IV, leading to a poor prognosis, five-year survival rate ranging between 10% and 40%. Oral cancer etiology is multifactorial, known still incomplete. The main etiopathogenic factors are exposure to cigarette smoke and alcohol consumption. We conducted a retrospective study of oral cavity tumors hospitalized in 2008-2012 in Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery Clinic of the Emergency County Hospital of Craiova, Romania. Of 143 tumors of the oral cavity, 125 were malignant, and of these, 115 (92%) were represented by squamous cell carcinoma. Tumor lesions were more common in males (69%), patients from rural areas (64%) and those over 50-year-old (87.71%).

Evaluation of microvascular density in inflammatory lesions and carcinoma of palatine tonsil.

The tonsil carcinoma with squamous cells seems to be one of the neoplastic lesions with a growing incidence worldwide, even in those geographical areas where the smoking incidence has been reduced. In the disease etiopathogenesis, more factors are incriminated. Among these, the most frequently mentioned are smoking, alcohol consumption and the infection with the Human Papilloma Virus. Among the morphological modifications incriminated for the tumoral appearance and development, there is also included the angiogenesis process that involves the apparition of new blood vessels out from the pre-existent ones, vessels that bring a plus of oxygen and nutritive substances for the tumoral cells. Taking into consideration the fact that the tumoral process is most often accompanied by an inflammatory reaction, in our study we also determined the microvascular density in the carcinoma with squamous cells in the palatine tonsil and in chronic tonsillitis, compared to the vascular density in normal tonsil stroma. We quantified the reaction of the mast cells in the stroma of the two types of lesions, too. The microvascular density in the carcinoma with squamous cells in the palatine tonsil was a lot greater than the microvascular density in chronic tonsillitis. The maximum number of blood vessels in tumoral lesions as well as their area, quantified through the "hot spot" technique on the surface unit, was around two times greater than in chronic tonsillitis. The number of mast cells was significantly larger in chronic tonsillitis and in tonsil carcinoma, too, but the reaction of these cells in the inflammatory affections was more intense than in the neoplastic lesions.