ABSTRACT
OBJECTIVE: Oral cancer is a significant threat to public health all over the world, especially in Southeast Asia. At the present time, screening of oral cancer, its premalignant stages as well as its early detection, is still largely based on visual examination of the mouth. Visual examination is highly subjective and hence lacks the specificity and sensitivity. The objective of this study was to determine the usefulness of toluidine blue in marking a biopsy site in potentially malignant disorders. METHODS: In this study, a total of 500 patients were screened. The study was a case-control study which included 17 lesion cases and 23 normal controls. Toluidine blue staining was taken into consideration to identify clinically doubtful oral potentially malignant lesions and to compare the clinical evaluation with toluidine blue stain followed by a punch biopsy and histological evaluation. SPSS Statistics version 16.0 and Chi-square test were used for statistical analyses. RESULTS: The most common site for potentially malignant lesions was found to be the buccal mucosa. The sensitivity of toluidine blue was found to be 88.89%, while specificity was found to be 74.19%. The positive predictive and negative predictive values were 50% and 97.83%, respectively. P = 0.000672 was considered statistically significant. CONCLUSIONS: The results seem to be promising, but many such studies have to be done at larger scales to exactly help us in identifying the capability of toluidine blue in the long run.
ABSTRACT
Neurofibromatosis is a genetically-inherited disorder of the nervous system that primarily affects the development and growth of neural (nerve) cell tissues and also causes cafe-au-lait spots on the skin, dysplastic abnormalities of the skin, nervous system, bones, endocrine organs and blood vessels. The two major classifications are NF-1, a generalized form, is the commonest and affects peripheral nerve tissues and NF-2, a rare central form, affects the central nervous system. An unusual finding of oral hamartomas may occur as part of NF-1 and here we presented one such rare case of oral hamartomas in a patient with Von-Recklinghausen's disease.
