Profile of patients accomplished by infectious oral lesions in a reference center of Northeast Brazil

Abstract

INTRODUCTION: The oral cavity is an important port of entry for infectious agents of numerous diseases with oral manifestations of systemic diseases. OBJECTIVE: The objective of this research is to conduct a clinical and epidemiological study of patients with infectious diseases, whose lesions were submitted to biopsies at the outpatient center of the Oral Injury Reference Center (CRLB). MATERIAL AND METHODS: A retrospective cross-sectional study was made, in which all the medical records of patients with a diagnosis of infectious disease between 1998 and 2015 were verified, proven by clinical and / or histopathological examination, at in the Oral Injury Reference Center. RESULTS: We selected 384 medical records based on the inclusion criteria of the sample of this research. Fungal infections were the most prevalent with 299 cases (78%), and 241 (82%) patients were females, aged 40 years and over, n = 237 (87%). There was a statistically significant association for all groups of lesions with the age variable (p<0.05). CONCLUSION:The most prevalent lesion in the research was the prosthetic stomatitis, a clinical variant of erythematous candidiasis, and the results pointed to the use of prostheses as the main risk factor for the development of this infection in the oral cavity.