Cytological Changes in the Buccal Mucosa and the Lateral Border of the Tongue in Passive Smokers and Nonsmokers Using Papanicolaou Staining in Patients without Clinical Oral Lesions

Recently efforts have increased to diagnose premalignant lesions. One of these techniques is brush cytology. The aim of this study was to compare changes in the cytology samples taken from passive smokers and nonsmoking healthy patients using staining Papanicolaou technique.
In this descriptive/analytical cross-sectional study, in two groups with 23 subjects (case and control), brush cytology samples were taken from the buccal mucosa and lateral border of the tongue from passive smokers with records of the duration of exposure to cigarette smoke (hours/day), using a sterilized brush. Then samples which were already fixed by a specific spray were stained with Papanicolaou technique in the laboratory. Then the samples were evaluated for the frequency of granular cells, binuclear cells, clear nucleolus, rough chromatin, nuclear vacuoles, apoptotic cells, and nuclear and cytoplasmic polymorphism. Data were analyzed with chi-squared test and t-test (α = 0.05).
There were no meaningful differences in the buccal mucosa and lateral border of the tongue between the passive smokers (p value = 0.31) and healthy control nonsmokers (p value = 0.26) in the frequency of micronucleus, clear nucleus, polymorphism, inflammation, and keratin overproduction. The mean years of cigarette consumption in the two groups of passive smokers with and without binuclear cells were significantly different (p value = 0.004).
The risk of cytologic changes might increase in passive smokers with an increase in exposure to cigarette smoke. However, cigarette was not a potential risk for mucosal changes in passive smokers.