Cytopathology: a useful technique for diagnosing oral lesions?: a systematic literature review

Oropharyngeal cancer is the 11th most common cancer worldwide. The diagnostic method of choice for oral cavity lesions is biopsy and pathological examination. Cytopathology is a simple and inexpensive method, but it is not yet widespread among dental professionals. The aim of this study was to evaluate the evidence for the effectiveness of cytopathology in diagnosing oral lesions. We conducted a systematic literature review of randomized clinical trials that compared the diagnostic accuracies of oral lesion cytology and histopathology. We used the following search terms: cytology, oral lesions, and oral cancer. The meta-analysis was performed according to Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses guidelines. Between 1967 and 2010, there were 80 relevant articles in the literature, 14 of which were included in this study. The I-square for sensitivity was 80.2%, and the specificity value was 96.7%. The pooled sensitivity was 0.942 [95% confidence interval (CI): 0.926-0.955], and the pooled specificity was 0.970 (95% CI: 0.963-0.975). The area under the curve was 0.9901. Our study suggests that cytology has good sensitivity and specificity for the diagnosis of oral lesions and allows the use of other associated techniques, such as DNA analysis, which may improve the accuracy of cytology.