Diagnostic Strategies for Early Detection of Oral Squamous Cell Carcinoma: A Review Article

Oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC) is the sixth most common cancer with high morbidity and mortality rates. Late diagnosis and high incidence rate of OSCC have become global healthcare issues. The purpose of this review was to provide an overview of the diagnostic and prognostic biomarkers in OSCC.

A literature search in PubMed, ScienceDirect, and Google Scholar was performed. The keywords “early detection”, “oral cancer”, and “oral squamous cell carcinoma” were searched in the title and abstract of the articles published in English from 2000 to mid-2021. The full texts of 250 articles were retrieved and only 63 articles met the inclusion criteria.

In summary, all selected papers discussed the importance of early detection along with different factors and techniques to detect oral cancer. The biomarkers were divided into three groups as follows: salivary biomarkers, circulating biomarkers, and tissue biomarkers.

In this review article, salivary biomarkers along with the circulating and tissue biomarkers were reviewed. Besides, some detection techniques were explained.