Screening of oral potentially malignant disorders with iodine vital staining for outpatients

Abstract

AbstractLesions in the oral cavity are easily accessible. The most useful tool in screening of oral cancer is visual inspection and palpation by specialists; however, sometimes it is possible to overlook very small transformations of superficial oral lesions. Thus, oral surgeons have attempted to develop a screening method to detect malignant transformations of oral mucosal lesions. Iodine vital staining is not only the sole screening method for epithelial dysplasia surrounding oral cancers but can also be used to establish the surgical margin during removal of oral cancers. Oral potentially malignant disorders (OPMDs) are a clinical presentation that may indicate the presence of oral cancer, whether in a clinically definable precursor lesion or in clinically normal oral mucosa. OPMDs were updated in the criteria of the World Health Organization in 2017. Notably, it is important to detect malignant transformations that may indicate the presence of superficial precancerous lesions at the early stage (mild to moderate) of oral epithelial dysplasia (OED). In this study, we evaluated the usefulness of iodine vital staining for screening of oral superficial mucosal lesions. We found that the sensitivity of 1% iodine vital staining for detecting OED was only 37.7%; however, combined with oral cytodiagnosis, the sensitivity was 45.5%.