Correlation of oral mucosal lesions with various habits and histopathological findings

The oral mucosa is subjected to numerous local irritants throughout the life. This makes the oral cavity one of the most common sites for various benign, premalignant and malignant lesions. These lesions can cause variety of symptoms, leading to severe discomfort in daily life. Oral lesions generally present in the form of ulcer, swelling, discolouration or restricted mouth opening. Hence, the knowledge of all these pathological lesions of oral cavity becomes important in their early diagnosis and effective management. In our current analytical and descriptive study, we studied clinical profile and histopathologic findings of various oral mucosal lesions, in 80 subjects. These lesions were found to be more common in middle aged males of low socioeconomic status. There was strong association between tobacco chewing and smoking with occurrence of premalignant and malignant lesions. Alcohol addiction often coexisted with tobacco consumption; and was found to be weakly associated with only malignant lesions. Aphthous stomatitis and Oral submucous fibrosis were found to be the most common benign and premalignant lesions, respectively. Most common malignant lesion was squamous cell carcinoma of buccal mucosa. History and clinical examination were needed to study the type, site, gross appearance and extent of the lesion. However intra-oral biopsy was gold standard in making accurate diagnosis of these lesions. Knowledge obtained through this clinico-histopathological study was useful to make early diagnosis of oral mucosal lesions for their effective management.