Abstrait

Topical Methylene Blue in-vivo Staining as a Predictive Diagnostic and Screening Tool for Oral Dysplastic Changes � A Randomised Case Control Study

Dr. Cristalle Soman, Dr. Ashok Lingappa, Dr. Ahmed Mujib B.R

Objective of the study: Oral Squamous Cell Carcinoma (OSCC) is one of the most common cancers in the world with 2/3rd of the cases in developing countries & most lesions are preceded by changes in the oral mucosa, the appearance of which is inadequate to determine its premalignant nature. Therefore a non-invasive, objective, predictive, screening (NOPS) method was adopted with methylene blue in vivo staining, which has been proposed for detecting lesions of oral cancers and potentially malignant disorders (PMDs). Hence this study was carried out to detect the diagnostic reliability of methylene blue in vivo staining in predicting oral dysplastic changes.

Materials and Methods: The randomised case control study consisted of 60 patients with oral PMDs and oral carcinoma in the study group and 60 healthy patients in control group with no mucosal lesions. The association of methylene blue stain uptake and histopathology diagnosis among the oral premalignant /oral cancer group and control group was analysed statistically & using Fisher’s exact parametric test of significance.

Results: The sensitivity of the study was 90.6% and Specificity was 57.1%. The Positive predictive Value, Negative Predictive Value, Efficiency of staining, False positive rate, False negative rate were 70.7%, 84.2%, 75%, 43%,& 9.4% respectively.