The prevalence of tongue lesions in Malaysian dental outpatients from the Klang Valley area

Abstract

Distribution characteristics of tongue lesions in Malaysians are important as local reference data in the daily clinical practice.

An Analysis of Biopsy-proven Tongue Lesions among 8,105 Dental Outpatients

“…Most previous investigations have found tongue lesions to be more common in women compared to men; however, further information regarding statistical significance has not been provided. 10,[12][13][14] Similar to these reports, we also observed a higher occurrence of these lesions in female patients, which was statistically significant. On the other hand, there are a few reports indicating a significantly larger number of males involved with tongue lesions in comparison to females.…”

“…There is a wide variation in prevalent age range among different studies, with 1 to 19 years in Malaysia, 10 20 to 30 years in Libya 14 and older than 60 years in Turkey 8 and Hungary. 13 In addition to factors, such as genetics and clinical vs histopathologic evaluation of tongue lesions, other elements may also be involved in these differences e.g.…”

“…As performed in previous investigations, patient age was subdivided into 10-year intervals for analysis purposes. [8][9][10] Locations of the lesions were arbitrarily classified into dorsal, ventral and lateral surfaces according to the information provided in the patients' records and anterior/posterior localization was also specified where accessible. In order to facilitate further evaluation of lesion types, all defects were categorized into eight groups including developmental, immune-mediated, reactive, benign, premalignant, malignant, retention/inflammatory salivary gland-related and miscellaneous.…”

“…8,9 There are several reports from around the world that have studied the clinical prevalence of tongue pathoses, [8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17] supplying valuable information that can not only be used as references for local practicing clinicians, but also assist in a better understanding of the variations between different countries and eventually offering more specific insight into the possible influencing factors responsible for some lesions. Thus presenting more recent detailed data on the frequency and demographic characteristics of diseased conditions from different geographic regions seems imperative, especially considering the ongoing modifications in patient lifestyle and a general shift toward growing public awareness and sensibility to oral health leading to possible changes in disease pattern.…”

“…Of course, this is due to the type of studied lesions which usually occurred on a specific site, e.g. hairy tongue, papillary atrophy and coated tongue that were evaluated in these papers, [8][9][10]13 are dorsal tongue lesions, according to definition. 19,20 It is noteworthy that delineation of the exact position of oral mucosal lesions can be problematic at times especially when considering large lesions that involve more than one area like the ventral tongue and floor of the mouth.…”