Objectives: To investigate the correlation between E-cadherin expression,clinicopathological parameters and prognosis of patients with oral squamous cell carcinoma. Methods: We examined the expression of the protein E-cadherin in 43 oral squamous cell carcinoma surgical speciments by SABC immunohistochemistry.Results: there was significant correlation between the level of E- cadherin expression and tumour stage (
P=0.024), invasive pattern (
P=0.009) and lymph node metastasis (
P=0.023). No relation was found with age (
P=0.084), sex (P=1.356) and differentiation (
P=0.877). The Kaplan-Meier method demonstrated that cases with E-cadherin negative staining had a significantly poorer prognosis than the cases with positive staining(
P=0.0146).Conclusions: E-cadherin may be one of the most useful markers predicting the metastatic potential and prognosis of oral SCC patients.