ABSTRACT
Epidemiologic studies have an important role in increasing our knowledge about the nature of diseases, which will result in better preventive and treatment modalities and promotes the general health and education of a society. These studies must be performed in all communities to obtain the geographical patterns of various diseases. One of the medical disciplines which have a close relation with dentistry is Otolaryngology. Some patients with malignant oral lesions, due to delayed referring have advanced or invasive lesions at their first admission, which necessitate hospitalization and extensive surgical interventions. On the other hand patients with posterior oral lesions seeking diagnosis and treatment, generally refer to ENT specialists rather than to dental practitioners. This was the reason why we were interested to study prevalence of patients with oral lesions admitted in ENT ward of a university hospital [Qaem hospital]. This was a retrograde study by using the existing data and reviewing the medical records of patients admitted between May 1999-2002 [Khordad 1378-81]. In case of pathology results, it was also added to our study sheets. We searched medical documents for the following criteria. 3497 patients admitted in ENT ward during the study period in ENT ward, that 141 cases were hospitalized for their oral lesions of which 4 were excluded because of lacking of medical documents. From the remaining 137 cases, the most common lesion was cleft palate [45.99%], followed by dental abscesses [15.32%] and oral SCC [13.14%], salivary gland tumor and hemangioma [4/38%]. Other lesions were sialadenitis, carcinoma of maxillary sinus, pseudoepithelial hyperplasia, central giant cell granuloma, fibrouse dysplasia, ranula, epidermoid cyst, Thyrogloss cyst, ameloblastoma, lymphangioma, angiofibroma. The most common location was maxilla [35.19%] and men were more affected than women. Our study revealed that if patients [except for developmental anomalies like cleft palate] refer in an early stage to their dentist and a careful examination is performed, they can be treated as outpatients or will need more conservative surgical interventions. These findings emphasize the important role of public educations and periodic examinations by dentists and the key role of preventive dentistry in oral health in general. Another problem to be addressed is that during the short course of education in ENT ward [one month for dental students] few number of cases with oral lesions may be observed, so it seems that this short course has little role in the educational programs of dental students and it should be revised