Velscope versus toluidine blue for detection of dysplastic changes in oral keratotic lesions : diagnostic accuracy study

Abstract EN

Background/aim Various techniques have been implemented in the early detection of oral potentially malignant disorders including commonly occurring hyperkeratotic lesions.

The objective of the present study was to assess the efficacy of visually enhanced lesion scope (VELscope Vx) versus toluidine blue (TB) with reference to histopathological examination in the detection of dysplastic changes in oral keratotic lesions.

Patients and methods A total of 30 patients having oral keratotic lesions were clinically diagnosed and subjected to VELscope Vx and TB examination.

Histopathological assessment of biopsied lesions was also done.

Sensitivity, specificity, positive and negative predictive values were obtained for both VELscope and TB and were compared with histopathological examination.

Results VELscope Vx was able to identify four out of seven cases with mild dysplasia and a case of oral squamous cell carcinoma, while TB was able to identify five cases and the oral squamous cell carcinoma case as true positive cases.

Thus, sensitivity was 62.5 and 75% for VELscope Vx and TB, respectively.

Regarding the specificity of VELscope Vx, it was 71.4% while TB had a specificity of 85.7%.

Conclusion The sensitivity and specificity of TB examination outweighed those of VELscope Vx in detecting dysplastic changes within keratotic lesions.