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Randomized Controlled Trial
. 2013 Aug 23:9:23.
doi: 10.1186/1746-160X-9-23.

The detection of oral pre- malignant lesions with an autofluorescence based imaging system (VELscope™) - a single blinded clinical evaluation

Henning Hanken  1 , Juliane Kraatz, Ralf Smeets, Max Heiland, Alexandre Thomas Assaf, Marco Blessmann, Wolfgang Eichhorn, Till Sebastian Clauditz, Alexander Gröbe, Andreas Kolk, Madiha Rana
Affiliations
Randomized Controlled Trial

The detection of oral pre- malignant lesions with an autofluorescence based imaging system (VELscope™) - a single blinded clinical evaluation

Henning Hanken et al. Head Face Med. .

Erratum in

  • Head Face Med. 2013;9:26. Assaf, Alexandre Thomas [added]

Abstract

Objective: The disease specific five-year survival rate especially for patients with advanced oral cancer has not improved significantly over the period of time. The most effective way of combating this dilemma is an early detection, diagnosis and eradication of early-stage lesions and their precursors. The use of VELscope® using an autofluorescence as a diagnostic tool might be useful in early detection of oral malignant lesions.

Materials and methods: 120 patients with suspicious oral premalignant lesions were examined with two examination methods. They were randomly divided into two groups. Group 1 was examined conventional with white-light and group 2 was examined additionally to the white-light-examination with an autofluorescence visualization device, VELscope®. Biopsies were obtained from all suspicious areas identified in both examination groups (n = 52). The diagnostic strategies were compared regarding sensitivity and specificity.

Results: Based upon the result, use of the VELscope® leads to a higher sensitivity (22.0%), but regarding specificity the additional use of the VELscope® is inferior (8.4%).

Conclusion: The VELscope device is a simple, non-invasive test of the oral mucosa, which can help the experienced clinician to find oral precursor malignant lesions.

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Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
This representative mucosal biopsy of the oral cavity shows regular squamous epithelium (Figure 1 left side) and a high-grade epithelial dysplasia. In comparison, the dysplasia on the right hand side of the picture shows a loss of maturation and nuclear atypia, like high nuclear-to-cytoplasmic ratio and nuclear irregularity, involving the whole squamous cell layer of the mucosa. Invasive tumour growth was not found.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Oral cavity with precancerous lesion of planum buccale.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Oral cavity with VELscope examination, the arrow shows the region of loss of fluorescence.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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