Correlation of Clinical Features in Oral Submucous Fibrosis: A 9-Year Retrospective Study

Oral Submucous Fibrosis is a chronic debilitating disease and potentially malignant disorder of the oral cavity known in medical literature for a long time. The study aims to correlate the clinical staging of Oral Submucous Fibrosis with various clinical findings of the oral mucosa like hyperpigmentation, erosions, ulcerations, VAS score, tongue protrusion, and cheek flexibility.

A retrospective observational study was undertaken and records of 1267 clinically diagnosed cases of OSMF were included in the study. Clinical grading was done as per criteria by Lai DR et al. The observations were tabulated and subjected to statistical analysis using SPSS software.

In our study, the incidence of hyperpigmentation, erosions, and ulcerations was higher in Group C OSMF. Visual analog scores in the range of 5-6 was noted in 40.9% of the total subjects, out of which 36.2% belonged to Group C OSMF. Tongue protrusion of less than 25 mm was seen in 10.65% of the subjects. Cheek flexibility of less than 0.6 cm was seen in 19.62% of the subjects, most of which belonged to Group D.

In our study, we found an increase in the occurrence and severity of symptoms with an increase in grades of OSMF, but this increase was not observed to be consistent. Hence classification based on a single clinical entity cannot be sufficient and correlations to other clinical findings should be studied over a large population and a multi-tier classification could be proposed in the future.