Materials & Methods: The biopsy records of the Department of Oral Pathology, Chulalongkorn University and Kyungpook National University, Division of Oral Pathology, Department of Tissue Regeneration and Reconstruction, Niigata University, Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Pathology, Tehran University of Medical science, Department of Oral Biology and Diagnostic Sciences, Chiangmai University, Department of Pathology, Western University, Department of Oral Diagnosis, Khon Kaen University were reviewed for oral lesions from patients aged 65 years and older diagnosed from 2003 to 2012. Demographic data and site of the lesion were collected. Histopathological diagnoses were categorized into 2 categories: namely non-neoplastic lesions (reactive/inflammatory lesions, cyst, allergic/ immunologic disorders, potentially malignant disorders, infection, and others) and neoplastic lesions (benign and malignant tumors). Data were analyzed by appropriate statistics using SPSS software version 17.0.
Results: Of the 76045 accessioned cases, 11346 cases (14.92%) were in geriatric patients. The mean age of age patients ±SD = 72.98±6.25 years. Five thousand and ten cases (44.16%) were diagnosed in males, while 6336 cases (55.84%) were diagnosed in females. The male to female ratio was 0.79:1. Non-neoplastic lesions outnumbered the neoplastic counterpart. The 5 most prevalent oral lesions in the geriatric population in this study in descending order of frequency were squamous cell carcinoma, focal fibrous hyperplasia, apical periodontal cyst, osteomyelitis and epithelial dysplasia, respectively. The site of predilection was labial/buccal mucosa followed by gum, mandible, tongue and maxilla, respectively.
Conclusion: The geriatric oral lesions from this study show similar trend with studies based on histopathological data, but different from the ones based on clinical data. This study shed more light on the potentially malignant disorders as well as the malignant tumor categories when compared to the clinically based studies.