The patients admitted to the Department of Dentistry, National Taiwan University Hospital from 1995 to 1998 for the treatment of oral cancers were statistically analyzed. Two hundred and ten patients were collected for the demographic study. Patients with buccal cancer, the cancer most closely related to betel quid chewing, were further analyzed. The statistics revealed that the annual incidence of buccal cancer increased in the recent years and buccal cancer accounted for about one half of all oral cancers. When compared with the data from western societies, the average age of male patients with buccal cancer was younger and the ratio of female to male was lower. Male patients with buccal cancer had an average age similar to that of all oral cancer patients but the average age of female patients with buccal cancer was significantly higher. The predilection for occurrence in males was stronger for buccal cancer when compared with cancers in other locations of the mouth. The ratio of betel quid chewers to non-chewers among male patients with buccal cancer increased over the recent and among all oral cancer patients the percentage of patients with buccal cancer also increased at the same time. Most of the buccal cancer patients had T3 or T4 tumor when first diagnosed. However, the rates of local and distant metastasis were lower than those of tongue cancer.