Method: New and existing patients with suspicious white, red, or red-white oral lesions were prospectively examined first by conventional oral examination (COE), then with the white light (WL) mode followed by the NBI mode of a NBI system. Records of the clinical presentation, intrapapillary capillary loop (IPCL) pattern as observed by NBI, and if taken, histopathology of all lesions were taken.
Results: A total of 272 lesions from 95 patients were identified by the end of the examination. NBI had a sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value, negative predictive value and accuracy of 100%, 74.63%, 92.38%, 100% and 93.77% respectively for aiding the detection of OPMDs and oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC) when compared with COE. The IPCL pattern had no statistical association with the clinical diagnosis when diagnoses were classified into ‘OPMD or OSCC’ and ‘benign pathology’.
Conclusions: NBI has high diagnostic accuracy for the detection and surveillance of OPMDs. Whilst there is no distinct correlation between microvascular IPCL pattern of OPMDs and pathological diagnosis, NBI is a great visualisation adjunct as it can aid the detection of lesions not identified by COE or WL examination.