Prevalence of Oral Submucous Fibrosis (Osmf) Among Patients Visiting an Institutional Hospital Set Up

Oral Submucous fibrosis (OSMF) occurs in young adults, who are in the habit of chewing tobacco mixed with areca nut and its various commercially available preparations. The disease results in progressive inability to open the mouth due to the submucosal fibrosis initiated by chronic inflammation affecting mainly oral mucosa. Oral Submucous Fibrosis (OSMF) is a disease that frequently occurs among the Indian population. The present study aims to evaluate the prevalence of OSMF among the population visiting an institutional hospital set up. This retrospective study was conducted among the patients visiting the Oral Medicine and Radiology (OMR) department of a private dental college. The data was collected by reviewing the case sheets of the patients diagnosed with OSMF. The collected data was statistically analysed using IBM SPSS Software (20.0). Within the limits of the study, it can be concluded that OSMF was more prevalent among males. It can be seen that the Grade- I, III, IV of OSMF are the most prevalent among males and Grade II is more prevalent among females. The association between gender and OSMF is statistically significant (p-value: 0.016<0.05). It is the most prevalent among the age group of 20-29 years and 40-49 years; Grade I OSMF was the most prevalent among all the age groups. This association between age and the prevalence of different grades of OSMF shows a high statistical significance (p-value: 0.008<0.01).