A retrospective clinicopathological study on oral lichen planus and malignant transformation: Analysis of 518 cases

Abstract

Objective: To investigate the epidemiological and clinical characteristics of a relatively large cohort of patients with oral lichen planus (OLP) from eastern China. Study design: A total of 518 patients with histologically confirmed OLP in a long-term follow-up period (6 months-21.5 years) were retrospectively reviewed in our clinic. Results: Of the 518 patients, 353 females and 165 males were identified. The average age at diagnosis was 46.3 years (range 9-81 years) with the buccal mucosa being the most common site (87.8%). At initial presentation, white lichen and red lichen was seen in 52.3% and 47.7% patients, respectively. Of these, 5 (0.96%) patients previously diagnosed clinically and histopathologically as OLP developed oral cancer. All of them were the females with no a history of smoking or alcohol use. Conclusions: Clinical features of eastern Chinese OLP patients were elucidated. Notably, approximately 1% of OLP developed into cancer, which provides further evidence of potentially malignant nature of OLP. Key words:Oral lichen planus, clinical features, malignant transformation, oral cancer.

Clinical variants of lichen planus

“…The topographic distribution of oral lesions is not uniform. In studies by Shen et al buccal mucosa was involved most frequently with 14.9 % [11]. The clinical morphology of MLP is diverse.…”

“…Oral MLP is a facultative precancerous lesion. In individual studies malignant transformation was observed in 0.4-3.7 or 5.3 % of cases [11,15,24]. A recent review article documented esophageal involvement by LP [25].…”

“…About half the patients have solitary lesions; an equal number have multiple changes [11]. The topographic distribution of oral lesions is not uniform.…”

“…In occasional studies, a slight female predominance of perhaps 1.2: 1 has been observed [9]. An exception to the rule of equal gender distribution is once again oral mucosal lichen planus, where a female predominance of 1.4: 1 or 2: 1 has been found [10,11]. LP can manifest at any age, preferentially between 30 and 60 years of age [12].…”

Association of Oral Lichen Planus with Autoimmune Diseases in A Northern Serbia Population: Matched Case-Control Study and Literature Review

“…Eleven of them had histological confirmation of all cases with distinguish between OLP and OLL [1,11,23,25,[27][28][29][30][31][32][33] and five presented with control group [11,13,24,25,27]. It can be noticed clear difference in reported coexistence of thyroid gland pathosis and OLP between Northern and Central European countries (Finland [11], Czech Republic [28] and Croatia [34]) and Southern Mediterranean countries (Italy [1,26] and Turkey [29]).…”