Introduction
OSCC, deaths, tumor
TUMOR, ORAL SQUAMOUS CELL CARCINOMA
Oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC) accounts for over 375,000 new cases and 175,000 deaths yearThere is a clinical need for a diagnostic tool that provides a swift intraoperative assessment of the complete resection margin, enabling surgeons to correct the margins immediately. The only widely used intraoperative technique in OSCC surgery is fresh frozen sectioning, during which only a fraction of the resection margin is analyzed due to the small number of sections that can be obtained. Fresh frozen sectioning is also affected by surgical sampling errorFluorescence molecular imaging (FMI) is a promising approach to avoid this problem. FMI is a wide-field imaging technique that uses tumor-specific fluorescent tracers to enhance the visualization of tumor tissueIn this phase II clinical study, we demonstrate that intraoperative specimen-driven margin assessment with FMI using cetuximab-800CW detects tumor-positive margins and close margins with high sensitivity. Therefore, this imaging approach could lead to a decreased necessity of adjuvant chemoradiotherapy when intraoperatively detected positive margins are surgically adjusted.