Intraoperative Margin Control in Transoral Approach for Oral and Oropharyngeal Cancer

Piecemeal resection provides an innovative conceptual tool for margins surveillance because it entails the intraoperative evaluation of the whole resection margins and not just sample points, which should result in a better control of deep margins compared to en bloc resection. Although it is recognized that the intraoperative use of narrow band imaging (NBI) results in a better control of superficial margins, in this exploratory study we investigated whether NBI and piecemeal resection could be used in combination to improve margin control at both superficial and deep levels. Because piecemeal resection is based on frozen section analysis, we wanted to verify its reliability compared to definitive histological examination.