Objectives: The floor of mouth carcinoma (FOMC) displays some different characteristics compare to the other sites of oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC). This study aims to determine the characteristics and to evaluate the care and outcomes for FOMC patients.

Patients and methods: A total of 44 FOMC patients who had visited the Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery, Tokyo Dental College in Japan (40 males, 8 females; mean age 61.1 years; range 42–86 years) were eligible for analysis. A retrospective consecutive case review was performed during 1997–2012.

Results: In FOMC patients, the ratio of men to women was 5:1. Furthermore, smoking rate and drinking rate (85.4% and 83.3%) were significant higher than tongue carcinoma (63.0%, 69.9%, p < 0.05) and gingival carcinoma (60.0%, 56.8%, p < 0.05). In FOMC, the incidence of double cancers (27.1%) with esophageal or gastric cancer was significant higher than tongue carcinoma (11.0%, p < 0.05) and gingival carcinoma (5.7%, p < 0.05). We tended to select surgical treatment with free forearm flap (45.5%), tongue flap (18.2%), rectus abdominis musculocutaneous flap (9.1%), and pectoralis major myocutaneous flap (4.5%). The overall 5-year cumulative survival rates were 100% (stage I), 75.0% (stage II), 78.3% (stage III) and 62.5% (stage IV).

Conclusion: A surgical treatment remains an essential component of the treatment of FOMC patients. There were a lot of double cancers in FOMC patients. Therefore, FOMC might be more likely to lead to eating disorders. From this standpoint, we thought that more important things for FOMC patients were early detection and improvement of quality of life compared to the other sites of OSCC.