Clinical and pathological factors affecting the accuracy of liquid-based oral cytology for oral potentially malignant disorders

Abstract

Abstract Background Early detection and early treatment are important for oral squamous cell carcinoma (SCC), and liquid-based cytology (LBC) is a convenient and easy method for detecting malignancies. However, achieving an accurate diagnosis of potential malignancies of the oral cavity remains challenging. We investigated clinical factors that are important for oral cytology diagnoses. Materials and Methods We retrospectively analyzed the pathological diagnoses of 133 LBC samples obtained at Kagawa University Hospital. The samples' cytological diagnoses were based on Papanicolaou staging. We investigated samples of oral epithelial dysplasia (OED)(n = 35), carcinoma in situ (CIS) (n = 13), and SCC (n = 85) to determine the associations between the clinicopathological features and the false negative rate (FNR) by the χ2-test. Results Our analyses demonstrated that OED (n = 14), CIS (n = 6), and SCC (n = 5) had been misdiagnosed as negative (class 2). Age (≤ 64 or > 65 years; p = 0.0391), whitening of the lesion (p = 0.0054), and the ulcer of the lesion (p = 0.0034) were significantly associated with the FNR. No significance was observed for sex, smoking, or alcohol consumption. Conclusion Our results indicate that despite the limitations of LBC and regardless of clinical features, LBC is a simple and useful supplementary method to detect oral cancers.