Oral Exfoliative Cytology

Exfoliative cytology is a simple, non-invasive diagnostic technique which could provide as an adjunct in early diagnosis of oral premalignant and malignant lesions. Cytology is cheaper and easy procedure that can be carried out at outdoor patient department to diagnose malignancy at early stage. It’s a microscopic examination of shed or desquamated cells from the epithelial surface usually the mucous membrane. It also includes the study of those cells that have been collected by scraping the tissue surface or collected from body fluids such as sputum, saliva etc. Aging, smoking, alcohol consumption,systemic diseases such as anaemia, diabetes mellitus, radiotherapy, chemotherapy, pregnancy, menstruation, medications are the other possible factors that could contribute to the morphometric changes in the cells. Oral exfoliative cytology is the simple, sensitive and valuable adjuvant for gold standard Biopsy.