Referrals to a specialist can help patient management, particularly for patients who may have malignant disease (or potentially malignant disease); a complicated or serious non-malignant diagnosis (such as HIV disease or pemphigus); a requirement for treatment with potent agents or complicated equipment; extra-oral lesions; or disease that is unresponsive to treatment. It can also be useful where there is a diagnosis that is in some doubt, or a situation when the clinician (or patient) requests a second opinion or wishes to share care with the specialist.
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Scully et al. (2007) studied this question.