Diagnosis and Detection of Orally Potential Malignant Lesions – A Systematic Review

Successful early detection of oral cancer symbolizes one of the superlative techniques which would eventually increase the oral cancer survival rate and improve quality of life globally. Patients diagnosed with oral cancer within the localized stage have a substantially greater chance of successful treatment, and there is a greater chance of morbidity if the patient is diagnosed with cancer in later stages.

This study aims to review the literature to evaluate as well as provide awareness of current trends and recent advances in early diagnostic tools of oral cancer.

This research is a systematic review. The evaluation was confined to articles published in past 30 years i.e., from 1990 - 2020. Searches were conducted electronically. Documents and data were retrieved from the online databases PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science and Google Scholar.

Out of 117 studies obtained initially, 35 articles were selected to be included in the systematic review.

Oral cancer detection techniques can provide real-time diagnoses and are non-invasive. However, additional technology development and clinical studies are necessary to determine the sensitivity and specificity of these individual and combined techniques and to establish and validate their diagnostic accuracy and use.