[Role of narrow band imaging in the diagnosis of premalignant and malignant lesions of oral cavity].

Objective

To investigate the role of narrow band imaging (NBI) endoscopy in diagnosing oral premalignant and malignant lesions.

Methods

NBI and white light (WLI) endoscopy were performed on 85 patients (47 females, 38 males, aged from 12 to 83 years old, the medium age was 58 years) with 144 oral lesions from July 2016 to October 2017 in the First Affiliated Hospital of Xiamen University. NBI findings were classified into 5 types according to the Ni's classification and compared with histopathological results. Sensitivity, specificity, accuracy, positive predictive value (PPV) and negative predictive value (NPV) of NBI and WLI were calculated. Accuracy of NBI on premalignant and malignant lesions were compared with that of WLI. The connection between NBI findings and pathological results were investigated. SPSS 22.0 software was used to analyze the data.

Results

Sensitivity, specificity, PPV, and NPV of NBI vs WLI were 96.5% vs 81.2%, 98.3% vs 98.3%, 98.8% vs 98.6%, and 95.1% vs 78.4%, respectively. NBI findings showed high accordance with the phathological results (kappa=0.943,P<0.01). However, consistency between WLI findings and the phathological results was relatively low (kappa=0.765, P<0.01). NBI was more accurate in diagnosing both premalignant (P<0.01) and malignant lesions (especially for high-grade intraepithelial neoplasia, P<0.01) than WLI. There was remarkable correlation between NBI findings and the phathological results (r=0.836, P<0.01).

Conclusions

NBI shows high accuracy in detecting premalignant and malignant lesions of oral cavity. Ni's NBI classification is helpful to diagnose the premalignant and early malignant lesions as well as to evaluate tumor invasion. Thus, NBI can contribute more to early diagnosis and therapy of premalignant and malignant lesions of oral cavity.