Oral cavity cancer accounts for approximately 3% of all malignancies and is a significant worldwide health problem.
Most oral malignancies occur as squamous cell carcinomas (SCCs); despite remarkable advances in treatment modalities, the 5-year survival rate has not significantly improved over the past several decades and still hovers at about 50-60%.
Many oral SCCs develop from premalignant conditions of the oral cavity. A wide array of conditions have been implicated in the development of oral cancer, including leukoplakia, erythroplakia, palatal lesion of reverse cigar smoking, oral lichen planus, oral submucous fibrosis, discoid lupus erythematosus, and hereditary disorders such as dyskeratosis congenital and epidermolysis bullosa.
Despite the general accessibility of the oral cavity during physical examination, many malignancies are not diagnosed until late stages of disease.
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In order to prevent malignant transformation of these precursor lesions, multiple screening and detection techniques have been developed to address this problem.
Fuente: Youtube / Medical World
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