SUMMARY
The issue of premalignant lessions of oral mucosa causes embarassment in every day practice of the head and neck oncology departments. The prevalence of their occurrence varies between 1-12%. They are often the cause of unnecessary surgery (need for histological verification), but failure to diagnose can lead to the development of malignant disease. As a result of primary prevention, efforts are made to diagnose and capture the development of their malignant transformation at an early stage, which greatly increases the survival of oral oncology patients and helps prevent extensive surgical resection procedure significantly affecting patients‘ quality of life.

Histopathological examination is currently considered to be the gold standard and the only reliable diagnostic method, but it is of an invasive nature. Therefore, there has been an effort in recent decades to find a method that reliably identifies premalignant alterations and the degree of its dysplastic change, while at the same time being minimally invasive, rapid and easy to evaluate. Combination of autofluorescence with endoscopic examination, which in the NBI mode allows to magnify the texture of the mucosal surface and evaluate subsurface angiogenesis as an early sign of mucosal abnormalities, could be considered. Based on a set of patients examined by us, this methodology has a significant sensitivity and specificity in detecting premalignant changes. Within the framework of primodiagnostics and dispensary it would be of great benefit in cancer prevention management, not only in the head and neck area, but also in other medical fields.
Key words: squamous cell carcinoma, premalignant lesions, autofluorescence, narrow band imaging.

Lek Obz, 2020, 69 (6): 200-207

Ľubomír MALÍČEK 1, Dušan HOLLÝ 1, Peter MLKVÝ 2, Ivan ČAVARGA 2, Anton MATEÁŠIK 2, Peter STANKO 1

1 Klinika stomatológie a maxilofaciálnej chirurgie LF UK a OÚSA, prednosta prof. MUDr. P. Stanko, PhD.
2 Združené pracovisko Medzinárodného laserového centra MŠ SR a OUSA, Bratislava, Slovensko