European Journal of Molecular & Clinical Medicine

Abstract

The aim of this study is to assess the prevalence of leukoplakia in different types of tobacco users. Tobacco utilization in India is increasing but there are considerable changes in the types and methods by which it is used. Oral cancer affects as many as 274,000 people worldwide annually 20. In this study The data collection was carried out during the period between July 2019 to march 2020. After searching through 86,000 patient records the Sample size for the study was taken as 93 patients diagnosed with leukoplakia. The data that was collected was tabulated in excel and then imported into SPSS software. Smoking form of tobacco was found to be used by 72.92% of patients. Smokeless form of tobacco use was noticed among 25% of the patients and a combination of both smoking and smokeless form of tobacco used was noticed among 2.083% of the patients . Homogenous types of leukoplakia were found among 76.04% of the patients followed by the non-homogenous form which included about 23.96% of the patients. Males were the most common gender comprising about 96.88% of the patients and females comprised about 3.13% . It was also noted that the most common type of tobacco used was cigarettes. Chi- square test was done to associate the type of tobacco used and clinical variants of leukoplakia, it was not statistical significant (p=0.596). Within the limitations of the present study we were able to conclude that there was no association between the habit of tobacco use and the clinical variant of leukoplakia . Multicentric study with a larger sample size will give a more definitive outcome.