Consistency rates of clinical and histopathologic diagnoses of oral soft tissue exophytic lesions.

BACKGROUND AND AIMS: Histpathologic diagnosis of exophytic lesions is occasionally influenced by clinical and radiograph-ic diagnosis and even the surgeon's observation during biopsy. The aim of this study was to evaluate the cases with failure in clinical diagnosis. MATERIALS AND METHODS: A total of 73 patients with peripheral exophytic lesions were evaluated in Zahedan Faculty of Den-tistry in 2006. Specialists gave their differential diagnoses based on the criteria of oral medicine texts. Then a biopsy was taken and the histopathologic diagnosis was determined. Finally, consistency rates of clinical and histopathologic diagnoses were de-termined. Statistical analysis was carried out with SPSS software using Chi-Square and Fisher's exact tests. RESULTS: In the present study 73 subjects with oral soft tissue (peripheral) exophytic lesions were orally examined and biopsies were taken. Forty-four subjects (60.35%) were females and 29 (39.7%) were males. A total of 81.7% (62 subjects) of clinical diagnoses were consistent with histopathologic reports. In 18.3% (11 subjects) of the cases clinical diagnoses were not con-firmed by histopathologic reports. CONCLUSION: In order to reach a diagnostic agreement, conformity of clinical and histopathologic diagnoses is necessary.