A 30-Year Retrospective Epidemiological Study of Oral Dysplastic Lesions in an Iranian Population

Background and aim: dysplastic lesions are characterized by replacement of partsor all of the epithelium thickness with cells with variable degrees of atypia andabnormal maturation. the aim of this study was to clinicopathologically evaluateoral dysplastic lesions recorded in the oral pathology department of isfahan dentalschool during a 30-year period.materials and methods: this cross-sectional study was performed on 130 recordsof patients diagnosed with dysplastic lesions at the oral pathology department ofisfahan dental school from 1989 to 2018. the patients’ data were entered into spssversion 23 and analyzed by the kruskal-wallis test, mann-whitney test, andspearman’s correlation test. p values < 0.05 were considered statisticallysignificant.results: from 11,964 recorded cases during the abovementioned 30-year period,130 cases were oral dysplastic lesions. most of the patients were in their fifth andsixth decades of life (24.6% and 23.3%, respectively). there was no significantcorrelation between the severity of dysplasia and gender (p=0.45). sixty-two cases(47.7%) had white and red lesions in clinical examination. buccal mucosa was themost common site of involvement. the most commonly recorded clinicaldifferential diagnoses included lichen planus, leukoplakia, and squamous cellcarcinoma, in decreasing order of frequency.conclusion: considering the importance of early diagnosis and treatment of oraldysplastic lesions, having comprehensive and up-to-date information about theirclinicopathological characteristics is necessary. since most of such lesions havemild dysplastic changes, their aggravation and malignant transformation can beprevented by early diagnosis.