Ebihara Y, et al. - Among 64 patients with cT1/2N0 tongue squamous cell carcinoma (SCC), disease-specific survival and neck lymph node metastasis (NLM) including tumor budding grade (TBG) were analyzed in order to determine factors involved in NLM and prognosis. As per the multivariate analysis, TBG was the sole predictor of NLM and the prognosis of early tongue SCC, suggesting its possible utility in selecting overwhelming risk patients.