Introduction:

the early diagnosis is a key factor in the management of an oral cancer, so, it is very important the implementation of simple, not harmful and liable diagnosis method. In this sense, the interest in oral cytology has increased for diagnosing and monitoring.

Objetive:

to determine the usefulness of exfoliative cytology in the brushiness as a method for the early diagnosis in oral cancer.

Methos:

a descriptive, cross-sectional, quanti-qualitative and double blind study was made in the Maxillofacial Surgery service from Arnaldo Milián Castro Hospital, between March 2016 and October 2017. The sample was set by 33 patients who had oral lesions with suspicion of malignancy or premalignancy.

Results:

there was a predomination in the masculine sex (63,6%) and those whose ages were between 60 and 69 years (33,3%). The sample with dental brush was painless for the 45,5% of patients; while 54,5% of them referred slight discomfort. There was a concordance of 0,89 according to Kappa index between the presence of neoplastic cells that were detected trough cytology and biopsy with a high diagnostic value of test, with positive predictive value (0,95) and negative predictive value (0,93). According to the grade of differentiation of the malignant tumor, the concordance between both methods was slight (0,094).

Conclusions:

the cytology was a useful method for the diagnosis of oral cancer, that showed a coincidence with the histopathological diagnosis in predomination way.

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