Epidemiological Trends and Clinicopathological Characteristics of Oral Leukoplakia: A Retrospective Analysis From a Single Institution in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India

Background India has a high prevalence of oral potentially malignant disorders and malignant transformation. Cases of oral leukoplakia are not commonly encountered, and only a small cohort of patients undergo biopsies for the same. This study aims to assess the various etiological factors causing leukoplakia, the clinical features, histopathological findings, and treatment received by the patients who were histopathologically diagnosed with oral leukoplakia. Methodology Oral leukoplakia cases were included in this study from total biopsy samples received in the oral pathology department. Details were collected from the Dental Information Archival Software of our institution. The period analyzed was from January 1, 2021, to December 31, 2023. Relevant clinical and histopathological details were retrieved and tabulated. Statistical analysis (chi-square test) was used to assess the association between the clinicopathological parameters using SPSS software version 21.0 (IBM Corp., Armonk, NY, USA) with a significance level set at a p-value <0.05. Results A total of 76 oral leukoplakia cases were retrieved from 2,600 biopsy samples. The prevalence of oral leukoplakia was 3.1% to 3.4% for the three years. Leukoplakia was commonly observed in those aged 51 to 60 years (33%). Overall, 21% of the patients with leukoplakia showed severe epithelial dysplasia, 22% showed mild epithelial dysplasia, and 39% showed moderate epithelial dysplasia. Moreover, 30% of the patients presented with leukoplakia and oral submucous fibrosis and showed varying degrees of epithelial dysplasia. Finally, 45% of the patients were managed conservatively using pharmacotherapy. Conclusions Severe epithelial dysplasia was commonly associated with oral leukoplakia. Oral submucous fibrosis was also found to be associated with leukoplakia and showed epithelial dysplasia. None of our proliferative verrucous leukoplakia cases showed any association with oral submucous fibrosis. Surgical management was the preferred treatment.