Gingival Proliferative Verrucous Leukoplakia and Cancer: A Systematic Review With Meta-Analysis.

OBJECTIVE

Proliferative verrucous leukoplakia (PVL) is an oral potentially malignant disorder. Forms that affect only one tissue are poorly studied, especially the exclusively gingival PVL (gPVL), which may have a more increased malignant transformation potential. The aim of the present study was to characterise the gPVL and its risk of malignant transformation to better raise awareness of this specific disorder.

MATERIALS AND

METHODS

The systematic review was performed on PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science and Google Scholar. Only articles reporting primary studies, case reports and case series were included. The meta-analysis was performed for the cancer prevalence, proportion of smokers, age and sex ratio, recurrences of gPVL and mortality.

RESULTS

A total of 1298 studies were assessed for eligibility by reading titles and abstracts. Fourteen original articles were included with a total of 58 patients. The malignant transformation rate of gPVL was 47.75%. The mortality was 5.84%. The mean follow-up duration before malignant transformation was 3 years.

CONCLUSION

gPVL seems to have a faster malignant transformation rate than the other forms of PVL. Finding anatomo-pathological or genetic markers could be a line of research to predict gPVL malignant transformation and improve its diagnosis and treatment.