Aplicação da ultrassonografia no diagnostico e tratamento do câncer de língua

Abstract

Oral cancer is a global public health problem and the survival rate for patients with tongue cancer has remained relatively unchanged and unsatisfactory, reaching only about 50% after five years of follow-up. Surgery with or without radiotherapy remains the predominant therapeutic approach, with clinical staging being an essential parameter for stratifying the risk of death for affected patients. However, the accurate assessment of clinical and microscopic features with potential for prognostic determination is challenging, and imaging techniques, such as ultrasonography, have been proposed as important aids, although their effectiveness in the analysis of different characteristics of the neoplasm remains a field of wide debate in the literature. Thus, this scope review aimed to evaluate the efficiency and applicability of ultrasound in the clinical management of tongue cancer. A search strategy was applied to different electronic databases, such as Scopus, Web of Science and Pubmed/MEDLINE, in addition to Google Scholar as a gray literature base. Inclusion and exclusion criteria were constructed and applied to select the most relevant studies for the purpose of the study. At the end of the article selection process, a total of 47 studies were included in this review and investigated the use of ultrasound in different clinical moments of tongue cancer management, including pre-, trans- and postoperative. The results demonstrated that ultrasonography was used and proved to be reliable for assessing the thickness and microscopic depth of the tumor, for identifying lymph node metastases, for determining the status of tumor surgical margins, and for monitoring treatment in the postoperative context. In addition, the Doppler ultrasound technique provided valuable information about blood flow in the deep lingual artery, helping to identify areas with increased neovascularization. Therefore, this study highlighted the importance of ultrasound in the clinical management of tongue cancer, providing reliable data on important prognostic parameters, being a useful tool that can improve the survival rate of patients.