Clinical and pathologic patterns of oral leukoplakia: A retrospective study of surgical management and clinical outcome

The aim was to evaluate the clinical-pathological characteristics and to assess the outcomes of the clinical management of oral leukoplakia (OL), considering the clinical-pathological characteristics as predictors of OL progression. This retrospective observational analysis was conducted with patients referred to our university between the years 1998 to 2013. Only the medical records containing age, gender, smoking status, alcohol consumption, clinical, pathological and management documentation were included. A new biopsy was performed in cases in which recurrence or changes in clinical parameters were observed. The association between the clinical, demographic and histologic characteristics and the clinical fate of OL was analyzed with the Fisher exact test. Of 120 patients, 22 presented demographic and clinicopathologic data eligible for further analysis, of which 54.5% were female and 45.4% were male. The mean age was 52.5±13.11 years, and the follow-up period ranges from 12-180 months. Tongue dorsum and buccal mucosa were the most affected sites, with predominance of lesions with <200 mm2 (77.3%) in size, with a majority representing the homogeneous type (95.4%). Twenty two percent presented changes in the clinical/histological behavior. Most of the surgically treated cases presented no signs of changes in the behavior. Clinical, demographic and pathologic variables were not significantly associated with remission/stabilization or recurrence of OL (p>0.05). Although the possible bias related with retrospective studies, our results suggests that surgical removal of OL should be performed even in cases without OED. None of the studied clinical traits were reliable in the prediction of the risk of OED worsening.