Leucoplasias bucais: monitoramento de no mínimo 5 anos

Abstract

Oral leukoplakia is defined by the World Health Organization as a white patch, ruling out other white lesions that do not demonstrate a risk of malignancy. Possible etiological factors include tobacco and alcohol, but it can occur in an idiopathic form. The possibility of malignant transformation is related to clinical and histopathological characteristics, age, gender, presence of risk factors, lesion size, location, and presence and degree of epithelial dysplasia. Therefore, it is important to analyze the clinical and microscopic characteristics of oral leukoplakia and correlate them with the behavior of these lesions for at least 5 years after diagnosis. This study aims to catalog, describe, and analyze oral leukoplakia diagnosed at the Oral Anatomopathology Laboratory of the Federal University of Alfenas (UNIFAL-MG) between 2012 and 2019 based on medical records of anatomopathological reports, medical records of the Stomatology Clinic of UNIFAL-MG, histological slides, and with the responsible professionals. The data collected showed that oral leukoplakia diagnosed by the Anatomopathology Laboratory of UNIFAL-MG were more prevalent in male patients (57.8%), white (60.5%), and aged between 51 and 60 years (32%). The predominant clinical characteristic was homogeneous (24.5%), with most medical records not containing this information (58.5%), mild dysplasia (40.1%), excisional biopsy being the most frequently performed procedure (69.4%), and the tongue (25.2%) and buccal mucosa (25.2%) being the sites with the highest number of diagnosed cases. Risk factors were not reported in 72.8% of medical records. Of the 17 slides recovered from the laboratory slide, which did not contain information on epithelial dysplasia, 12 presented dysplastic alterations in varying degrees. The follow-up of patients at the Stomatology Clinic of UNIFAL-MG is satisfactory. Therefore, it is concluded that dentists have difficulty in describing the clinical characteristics of oral leukoplakia, and do not investigate the presence of risk factors for the development of oral leukoplakia together with the patients, or do not inform them of the presence of risk factors for the development of oral leukoplakia. In addition, patients are not aware of the importance of clinical monitoring of oral lesions, especially potentially malignant disorders.