[Oral manifestations in AIDS or HIV infection. Bibliographic update].

Abstract

AIDS is a systemic infection that in many steps of its evolution presents various oral lesions and clinical conditions. This fact raises a problem for the dentist who are working on heterogeneous populations of healthy and infected people as well as on AIDS patients: to receive a continuous update about the disease. Apart from the risks of exposure inherent to his personal relation with HIV-infected or AIDS patients, the dentist is one of the health careworkers who must and ought recognize the oral signs of the disease when they appear in the mouth. For this reason this paper describes recent data on oral findings in AIDS: fungal, viral and bacterial infections, neoplasms and other manifestations of unknown or rare etiology. The most precocious clinical or pathological characteristics of these oral diseases suggesting HIV-infection or its results, are also stressed when described. Some doubts are possessed here about the meaning of outstanding oral AIDS lesions as "hairy leukoplakia". On the other way diagnostic methods which can help to recognize this lesion are also commented.