Foundation

erythroplasia is the most aggressive precancerous lesion in the oral cavity, with great potential for malignant transformation. At the time of performing the biopsy and analyzing the sample, severe dysplasia or invasive carcinoma may appear.

Objective

to describe the clinical and histopathological manifestations of oral erythroplasia in patients who are active tobacco smokers.

Methods

a descriptive and cross-sectional study was carried out, with 12 smokers clinically and histopathologically diagnosed with oral erythroplasia, attended in the Specialties Polyclinic stomatological consultation of the Saturnino Lora Torres Hospital, in Santiago de Cuba. For the collection of the primary data, a survey was made with the variables: age, sex, clinical diagnosis, time in the smoking habit, different ways of consuming tobacco, anatomical location and histopathological study of the disease.

Results

the male sex, the age group of 60 years old and over, and conventional smokers of 21 and over prevailed. Intense chronic inflammatory infiltrate and severe epithelial dysplasia were the most common tissue changes. The tissue dysplastic signs most involved were alteration of the interpapillary nails, loss of polarity of the basal cells, and hyperplasia of the basal layer cells; while the most relevant cytological dysplastics were hyperchromasia of nuclei and nucleoli, nuclear pleomorphism and increased nucleus-cytoplasm ratio, with the soft palate being the most frequent site.

Conclusions

all the smoking patients showed erythroplastic lesions on oral clinical examination, which was confirmed by histopathological study.

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