Evaluation of mean AgNors in Squamous Cell Carcinomas and Verrucous Carcinomas of oral mucosa

Squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) of oral mucosa is the most prevalent malignant tumor among oral cancers with 95 % incidence. Verrucous Carcinoma of oral mucosa is a unique and well differentiated form of SCC which is diagnosed with some difficulty from SCC specially when SCC shows warty appearance and/or, shows high differentiation in histopathologic view. In addition when verrucous carcinoma shows higher displasia, it must be differentiated from early invasive SCC. So, when verrucous carcinoma is diagnosed before changing to SCC, unnecessary treatments can be avoided. The aim of this study was to evaluate the mean number of Argirophilic nuclear organized regions (mAgNor) in SCC and Verrucous carcinoma for differential diagnosis between them. Methods & Materials: Twenty formalin fixed parrafin embeded blocks including ten SCC and ten Verrucous, were analyzed for AgNor parameters. AgNOR expression was measured by microphotometry by silver stain. T and Mann – whitney U tests were used to compare the data. mAgNor in SCC patients was 2.80±0.48 comparing with 1.95±0.28 in Verrucous carcinoma patients (P<0.001). Since the mAgNor in SCC was statistically more than the mAgNor in Verrucous carcinoma, so, the AgNor staining technique can be applied for early diagnosis of Verrucous carcinoma from well differentiated SCC.