Sclerosing Odontogenic Carcinoma: UPLIFTS and pitfalls

Sclerosing Odontogrenic Carcinoma (SOC) is a recent addition to the category of odontogenic tumours, which was first described by Koutlas et al. in 2008. It was described as primary intraosseous carcinoma with bland cytology, sclerotic stroma with presence of local infiltration showing aggressive behaviour. Following its discovery and the presentation of first case, only a handful of cases have been reported till date, which may be due to underreporting of the cases or inclusion of the case to other diagnosis since the features of this tumour overlaps with many other lesions of the oral cavity. Due to this factor, the pathogenesis of this category of tumours still remains enigmatic. The clinical features as a result of this factor are also not reported of the consistent type and overlaps with the already existing clinical features of other lesions. This lesion has only appeared till date twice in WHO classification of Odontogenic Cysts and Tumours. Thereby, the literature on this category is still in paucity. Therefore, the present review takes into account all of the features, diagnostic criteria and the markers discovered for this lesion and would provide an insight into whether this lesion is justified as a malignant lesion or should not be considered as a separate category of odontogenic tumour.