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Lip impressions: a new method for monitoring morphological changes in orofacial granulomatosis
S Chiandussi1, A R Tappuni, T F Watson
1Department of Oral Medicine, King's College London Dental Institute of Guy's, King's College & St Thomas' Hospitals, London, UK.
Aim:
To develop and evaluate an objective method for assessing lip size and treatment-related morphological changes in orofacial granulomatosis (OFG) patients.
Materials And Methods:
Patients with swollen lips because of OFG (n=21) were enrolled. A light-body polyvinylsiloxane material was used to take lip impressions before and after treatment (n=10), or during treatment (n=11). Plaster models were cast from the impressions and the lips were measured using callipers. The intra-examiner and inter-examiner reproducibility of the technique were assessed.
Results:
OFG patients had significantly larger lips than controls (P<0.0001). The coefficient of variation on repeated measurements of the same impression was 1.6% and for duplicate impressions was 2.6%. Significant reduction in lip size was shown in all 10 patients after diet restriction (P<0.002). Seven of 11 patients whose impressions were taken at least 3 months after the initiation of cinnamon- and benzoate-free diet also showed reduction in lip size during follow up (P<0.002).
Conclusions:
Serial lip impressions appear to be reliable for routine quantification of morphological changes of the lips in OFG patients. We present a new reproducible and sensitive method for assessing changes in lip size in response to treatment in OFG.
