Lymph node staging systems in oral squamous cell carcinoma: A comparative analysis.

<bold>Objectives: </bold>The 8th edition of the AJCC has introduced a new nodal staging system for head and neck cancers. Alternate nodal staging systems exist, however they have not been compared to the current AJCC staging system.<bold>Materials and Methods: </bold>A retrospective analysis of 643 patients with oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC) treated with surgery ± adjuvant therapy in a single institution between 2004 and 2014 was undertaken. Nodal staging was performed using AJCC 8th edition (AJCC8), number of positive lymph nodes (PN), log odds of positive lymph nodes (LODDS) and lymph node ratio (LNR). Survival analyses for disease free survival (DFS) and overall survival (OS) were performed with the different staging systems and they were compared on the basis of hazard consistency, hazard discrimination, explained variation and likelihood difference.<bold>Results: </bold>Overall, PN and LNR best predicted OS and DFS in our cohort of patients. AJCC8 had poor discrimination between sub-stages of pN2.<bold>Conclusion: </bold>PN and LNR provided the most accurate prediction of OS and DFS for patients with OSCC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]