Does Clinical Staging and Histological Grading Show Parallelism In Oral Submucous Fibrosis? A Retrospective Study from an Indian City

Objectives: Oral submucous fibrosis is a common oral health problem in India. This study was conducted to correlate the histopathological diagnosis with habits and clinical findings in patients suffering from oral submucous fibrosis (OSF). Methods: The study group comprised of randomly included 40 patients. A comparison between clinical staging (a method used to find out the stage of disease using tests which include physical examination) and histopathological grading (grading is a measure of the cell appearance in pathology) was done in each case. Fisher’s exact test was done to obtain statistical analysis. Results: Among 15 cases of clinically diagnosed stage I lesions, 4 (10%) were grade I, 6 (15%) were grade II and 5 (12.5%) were grade III. Among 23 cases of stage II lesions 6 (15%) were diagnosed as grade I, 7 (17.5%) as grade II, 7 (17.5%) as grade III and 3 (7.5%) as grade IV. Among 2 cases of stage III both were diagnosed as grade II respectively. Conclusions: There was no correlation between clinical staging and histopathological grading of oral submucous fibrosis. The test results were statistically not significant. (p=0.635) This may be due to difference in severity and extent of fibrosis in different parts of the oral mucosa.