Chairside Diagnostic Procedures for OPMDs and Oral Cancers

Conventional oral examinations, including visual inspection and palpation, are the routine methods for the screening of oral lesions. However, subtle lesions may pass undetected, and it is difficult to make a distinction among benign, premalignant, and malignant lesions. As Oral cancer is the sixth most frequently occurring malignant tumor and is the major cause of morbidity and mortality with metastatic and invasive ability, it¿s urgent for early diagnosis of oral premalignant lesions, before its progression into oral carcinoma. The reported 5-year survival rate is around 50-63%. OSCC is usually preceded by premalignant lesions (Warnakulasuriya et al. 2007). In 2005, the World Health Organization recommended the use of the term oral "potentially malignant disorders" (PMDs) instead of precancerous lesions/disorders.