ABSTRACT
-he term “oral potentially malignant disorder” refers to a state of precancer in the oral cavity represented by a clinical presentation that carries an increased risk of progression to squamous cell carcinoma (1,2). This definition allows for the fact that cancer may not necessarily arise at the site of a specific lesion, but may be associated with a generalized state or “condition” or may arise in altered but clinically normal epithelium. Nevertheless, the most common disorders recognized as potentially malignant are leukoplakia and erythroplakia (3), which are clinical lesions with characteristic histopathological features. Although these disorders have a statistically increased risk of progression to cancer (2,4), at the present time, the prognostic significance of an individual lesion is difficult to determine. None of the currently available molecular markers have proved to be predictive and none have yet been evaluated in large prospective studies (5).
