Silver dots - A screening and prognostic aid in oral health

Abstract

Proper histopathological grading and typing of a tumour plays a significant role in evaluating and assessing the clinical management and prognosis of the tumour. Microscopically sometimes it is difficult in categorizing a tumour into benign or malignant as histopathology does not depict all the features which are of diagnostic and prognostic value. The present study aims:To evaluate the proliferative index of the oral epithelial cells taken from a buccal smear. A total of 90 subjects were included with 30 subjects in each category of normal, smokers and tobacco chewers. The smears were collected from buccal mucosa and applied on the glass slides followed by fixation with alcohol for 30 min and staining of the slides with AgNOR staining as proposed by Bukhari et al (2007). The AgNOR number where more in smokers when compared to normal subjects and was statistically significant. Similarly in chewers it was also comparatively higher when compared to normal and statistically significant. But the AgNOR counts between smoker and tobacco chewer, showed a mean difference of 0.6 and was not statistically significant.