Oral lesions in children/teenagers: a cross-sectional study of 225 reports in a pathology service in Amazon.

BACKGROUND

Epidemiologic studies of oral lesions in pediatric patients are scarce in Brazil, and especially in the northern region of the country. We aim to describe the distributions of oral lesions in children and teenagers diagnosed in a Pathology service of Amazon for over 15 years.

METHODS

The oral pathology files were retrospectively retrieved from January 2002 to December 2016 of patients younger than 18 years old at the Pathology Service of the Federal University of Amazonas. Patient information such as gender, age, race, aspect of the lesion, anatomical site, and histological type was compiled from the file of requisitions and histopathologic reports. Oral lesions were subdivided into 11 categories.

RESULTS

From a total of 2437 histopathological oral reports, 225 of them were from children. Of these, 125 (55.6%) were from male patients and 100 (44.4%) from female patients with a median age of 13 years. Of the 11 categories of oral pathologies, the one of the highest numbers was salivary gland disease (N.=50, 22.2%) with the subtype mucocele (N.=41, 18.22%) as the most prevalent followed by Miscellaneous pathology (N.=27, 12%) with the predominance of the subtype granulation tissue (N.=11, 4.89%) and finally Odontogenic tumors (N.=26, 11.6%) in third place, with odontoma (N.=16, 7.11%) as the most prevalent subtype.

CONCLUSIONS

Mucocele was the most prevalent lesion found, showing that a traumatic etiology is likely to be the most common situation in children and teenagers, while neoplastic lesions are generally rare.