Sridharan S, et al. - Given that depth of invasion was added to the definition of pathologic T stage (pT) by the eighth edition of the American Joint Committee on Cancer staging manual (AJCC8), researchers examined patients with early squamous cell carcinoma of the oral tongue (OTSCC; tumors measuring ≤4 cm) with histologically benign lymph nodes (pN0), to evaluate pT stage migration and the prognostic performance of the updated pT stage as well as to compare it with other clinicopathologic variables. As per AJCC8, they restaged a multi-institutional cohort of patients with early OTSCC. Local recurrence (LR) and locoregional recurrence (LRR) were the primary endpoints. An LR/LRR prediction model was proposed based on distance to the closest margin and perineural invasion status. According to the findings, AJCC8 pT criteria led to pT upstaging of patients with pN0 disease without improved LR or LRR prognostication. As a predictor of LR and LRR in patients with early OTSCC, the performance of the proposed model was better than that of pT.