Investigating the Correspondence between Clinical and Histopathologic Diagnosis of Premalignant and Malignant Epithelial Lesions in Oral Mucosa

Introduction: Early diagnosis of malignant and premalignant lesions of oral mucosa has a definitive role in promotion of prognosis and life span of patients. This study aimed to investigate how accurate is a clinician‘s doubt regarding existence of premalignant and malignant of oral mucosal via the correspondence between clinical differential diagnosis and histopathologic diagnosis. Furthermore, it investigates factors that will probably help to decrease the lack of correspondence. Methods: Among 650 available files associated with 2001-2010 in archive of pathology department, the files that had at least one clinical differential diagnosis as leukoplakia, erythroplakia, erythroleukoplakia and SCC and also files with definite microscopical diagnosis as a dysplasia or a type of microscopical SCC were selected. Afterwards, it was analyzed utilizing statistical methods, t test, and fisher’s exact test. Results: The correspondence of clinical differential diagnosis significantly increased with age (p-value=0.047); however there was no significant difference regarding sex and site of lesions. Conclusion: Observing doubtful lesions particularly in women in any site of the oral cavity; the clinician should strongly suspect a malignant and premalignant lesion and take biopsy of the lesions, particularly in cases which there is no irritant factor for development of the lesion.