Evaluation of the Agreement Rate of Clinical and Histopathologic Diagnosis in Patients Referring to Oral Pathology Department of Shiraz Dental School, 2001-2006

Statement of Problem: A correct diagnosis is the first step of treatment. The correspondence of clinical and histopathologic diagnosis is an indicator of the correct opinion of the surgeons and pathologists in diagnosis. This study aimed to evaluate the agreement rate of clinical diagnosis and histopathologic reports of the patients referring to oral pathology department of Shiraz dental school from 2001-2006.Methods and Material: In an analytic, retrospective study on 613 files of patients from the archive of oral pathology department, data on the age, site and surgeon were collected and analyzed by SPSS software using Chi-square test. Eighty one percent of the clinical diagnoses were confirmed with the pathologic reports. The greatest concordance was observed in the 8th decade and the lowest, in the first decade of life. The highest percentage of correct diagnosis was found in the vestibular mucosa, and the lowest in the palate. The highest percentage of agreement was observed for the mucocele and reactive soft tissue lesions, and the lowest for the benign non-odontogenic tumors and epithelial lesions. According to these results, more effective education, the exact clinical examination of the patients and more surgeon- pathologist correlations are necessary.