Evaluation of the efficacy of toluidine blue as an adjunctive tool to clinical examination in early diagnosis of clinically suspicious oral premalignant and malignant lesions.
Aim: The aim of this investigation was to assess the effectiveness of using toluidine blue dye for vital staining in addition to a routine clinical examination to enable the early identification of malignant lesions in the oral cavity.
Settings and Design: Over the course of 18 months, 16 participants with clinically suspect premalignant or malignant lesions in the Department of Oral Medicine and Radiology at a hospital.
Methods and Material: Every lesion had a thorough clinical examination, toluidine blue staining, and picture documentation of dye retention.
Statistical analysis used: Data entries were done in Microsoft Office Excel 2010 and analyses of results was done using Statistical Product and Service Solution (SPSS) version 22 software. Descriptive statistics such as mean and standard deviation was calculated for quantitative variables. Qualitative statistics was expressed in percentages. The p-value was fixed at 0.05. Diagnostic tests were applied to observe efficacy of the test method versus the gold standard method.
Results: According to the clinical examination, sensitivity was 86.6 Specificity was 0.0% for the Diagnostic efficacy of screening test (Toluidine blue) versus histopathological examination (gold standard). The positive predictive value was shown to be 92.86 %
Conclusion: Toluidine blue staining and other screening techniques are reliable in detecting oral cancer, but more thorough research with larger study samples is required for a more precise evaluation.
Keywords: biopsy, cancer, efficacy, toluidine blue
