Premium
The potential role of in vivo reflectance confocal microscopy for evaluating oral cavity lesions: a systematic review
Author(s) -
Lucchese Alberta,
Gentile Enrica,
Romano Antonio,
Maio Claudio,
Laino Luigi,
Serpico Rosario
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
journal of oral pathology and medicine
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.887
H-Index - 83
eISSN - 1600-0714
pISSN - 0904-2512
DOI - 10.1111/jop.12454
Subject(s) - confocal , confocal microscopy , reflectivity , oral mucosa , pathology , oral cavity , medicine , in vivo , dentistry , optics , biology , physics , microbiology and biotechnology
Background Since the early 2000s, several studies have examined the application of reflectance confocal microscopy (RCM) to the oral cavity. This review gives an overview of the literature on reflectance confocal microscopy analysis of the oral cavity in vivo and identifies flaws in the studies, providing guidance to improve reflectance confocal microscopy applications and inform the design of future studies. Methods The PubMed, ISI , Scopus, and Cochrane Library databases were searched for publications on RCM using the terms ‘reflectance confocal microscopy’ in combination with ‘mouth’ and other terms related to the topic of interest. Results The search gave 617 results. Seventeen studies were included in our final analysis. We decided to organize the selected articles according to four topics: healthy mucosa, autoimmune diseases, cancer and precancerous lesions, and hard dental tissues. Conclusion Although reflectance confocal microscopy is promising for diagnosing and monitoring oral pathology, it has shortcomings and there are still too few publications on this topic. Further studies are needed to increase the quantity and quality of the results, to translate research into clinical practice.