Oral potentially malignant disorders: risk of progression to malignancy.

Publication date: Available online 29 December 2017
Source:Oral Surgery, Oral Medicine, Oral Pathology and Oral Radiology
Author(s): Paul M. Speight, Syed Ali Khurram, Omar Kujan
Oral potentially malignant disorders (OPMD) have a stastically increased risk of progessing to cancer, but the risk varies according to a range of patient or lesion related factors. It is difficult to predict the risk of progression for any individual patient and the clinician must make a judgement based an assessment of each case. The most commonly encountered OPMD is leukoplakia, but others including lichen planus, oral submucous fibrosis and erythroplakia may also be seen. Factors associated with an increased risk of malignant transformation include gender, the site and type of lesion, habits such as smoking and alcohol and the presence of epithelial dysplasia on histologic examination. In this review we attempt to identify the important risk factors, and present a simple algorithm that can be used as a guide for risk assessment at each stage of the clinical evaluation of a patient.



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