Oral and pharyngeal cancer, grouped together, is the sixth most common cancer in the world .Oral and pharyngeal cancer is a preventable disease with devastating outcome and low survival rate, it is related to behavioral and lifestyle factors, including tobacco and alcohol and other regional specific behaviors as tobacco, khat and betel quid chewing .Objectives:Aimed to describe epidemiological characteristics of oral and pharyngeal cancer among a sample of Egyptian patients at the National Cancer Institute (NCI) , Cairo University.Subjects and Methods:A cross-sectional, descriptive, hospital-based study was done with seventy one of histopathologically confirmed oral and pharyngeal cancer patients, at the National Cancer Institute NCI, Cairo University, during the study period (July-December 2010) .Data were collected by interview with (71) patients and review the documents available with them, using specially designed semi-structured questionnaire.Results:the mean age for the studied sample was (56.85±14.21) years and females were older than males. The majority of the cases were older than 45 years (80%).Half of the cases were reside in Greater Cairo (49.3%).More than half (56.3%) of all cases were illiterates, with predominance of female. Pain was the most presenting symptom among the studied cases (40.8%), followed by nodule (36.6%) and persistent oral ulcer (31%).One third of the cases (36.6%) had cancer at the anterior 2/3 of the tongue followed by buccal mucosa and alveolar margin (15.5% and 11.3%).Squamous cell carcinoma type (SCC) is the predominant (90%) histological type among the cancer cases. Cases presented at early stages (I& II (were higher (67.7%)than those presented in advanced stages (III& IV) (32.4%).Most common risk factors among the studied sample were smoking (63.4%), spicy and hot foods (> 3 times a day) (67.6%), and exposure to the sun (52.1%). The mean duration (in weeks) ,elapsed between the start of symptoms and final diagnosis and treatment for all cases was (22.03 ± 7.75 week), which is higher for, female than males, for rural resident than urban, for illiterates, and cases with advanced stage (III,&IV) were presented later (29.01 ± 7.32 week) than earlier stages (I,II) (18.68 ± 5.39 week) with significant difference (p value <0.05). More than two third (74.7%) of the causes of the delay were related to the patients themselves, and one fourth (25.4%) of the causes related to the health care providers. The majority (39.4%) of the cases were referred by surgeons and the dentist referred (31 %) of the cases.Conclusion:Although, oral and pharyngeal cancer can be prevented easily by avoiding the risk factors and can be detected early without sophisticated equipments, awareness among the public and health care provider must be increase.