Smoking and drinking in relation to oral cancer and oral epithelial dysplasia.

Objective: Risks associated with smoking and drinking are not necessarily constant over the multistage pathway to oral cancer. We investigated whether smoking and drinking patterns differ for persons with oral cancer (OC) relative to those with oral epithelial dysplasia (OED), a precancerous condition.

Methods: Incident cases of OC and OED were interviewed using a questionnaire containing questions on smoking and drinking.