Correlation between Clinical and Histopathological Diagnoses in Oral Cavity Lesions: A 12-Year Retrospective Study

Proper diagnosis plays a key role in the treatment and prognosis of all diseases. Although histopathological diagnosis is still known as the gold standard, final diagnosis becomes difficult unless precise clinical descriptions are obtained. So, this study aimed to evaluate the concordance of the clinical and histopathological diagnoses of all oral and maxillofacial biopsy specimens in a 12-year duration.

Archive files and clinical findings related to 3001 patients who had been referred to the Department of Oral Pathology during a 12-year period were reviewed. The recorded information in files included age, sex, lesion's location, clinical and histopathological diagnoses, and specialty of dentists.

Out of 3001 cases included and reviewed in this study, 2167 cases (72.2%) were consistent between clinical and histopathologic diagnoses. Age, sex, and clinician's specialty were indicated to have no significant effect on diagnosis (p values = 0.520, 0.310, 0.281, respectively), but location and type of lesion affected that (p values = 0.040 and 0.022, respectively). In regard to location, the highest concordance of clinical and histopathologic diagnoses was observed in mouth floor lesions, and the lowest one was in gingival mucosa. In terms of lesion category, the highest and the lowest concordance rates belonged to white and red lesions and pigmented lesions, respectively.

The results of the present study show that the consistency of clinical and histopathological diagnoses was three times more than their inconsistency, and the accuracy of the clinicians was largely acceptable.