Abstract
Ideally, a diagnostic procedure should be neither time-consuming nor complicated and, in addition to high sensitivity, should have high specificity. Exfoliative cytology for screening of oral cancer and pre-cancer has never achieved the same success as it has in cervical screening. This method proved to have low sensitivity in the diagnosis of oral cancer. The reported high rate of false negatives was attributed to several factors including inadequate sampling, inaccessible sites, keratotic lesions, ulcerated lesions, co-existing infections, a high risk of procedural errors, and the subjective interpretation of the findings. Usage of oral cytobrushes for sampling, usage of toluidine blue staining for selecting the appropriate site for sampling (similar to acetowhite staining in cervix), and usage of liquid based cytology has improved the sampling procedure and has minimized the pitfalls associated with conventional smear preparations.
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Singh, A., Carroll, D.J., Mehrotra, R. (2013). Pitfalls and Limitations of Oral Cytopathology. In: Mehrotra, R. (eds) Oral Cytology. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-5221-8_10
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-5221-8_10
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