Context:Oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC) is a malignant neoplasm of epithelial tissue origin. OSCC is traditionally graded into well, moderate and poorly differentiated. The assessment of cellular and nuclear features is very important in the histological grading of OSCC.Aims:To establish morphometric study as an important prognostic indicator of OSCC.Settings and Design:The present study is undertaken for computer-assisted morphometric evaluation of the following parameters: changes in cell perimeter, nuclear perimeter (NP), cell area (CA), nuclear area (NA) and nuclear-cytoplasmic ratio (N:C) in twenty cases of OSCC and ten cases of normal oral mucosa.Subjects and Methods:The hematoxylin- and eosin-stained sections were observed under microscope for dysplastic features. For morphometric analysis, images were captured with a 2MP camera attached to a NLCD 307 microscope (Lawrence and Mayo India Pvt., Ltd.,) with a ×40 objective used for morphometric analysis. The images were classified, transferred and stored in the computer for image analysis.Statistical Analysis Used:One-way analysis of variance is used for comparing the parameter for multiple groups followed by Mann-Whitney U-test for pair-wise comparisons.Results:Highly significant difference was seen between cases and controls with respect to CA, NP and NA. Highly significant difference is seen in N:C ratio between the means of cases and control groups.Conclusions:Techniques of image analysis offer an opportunity to quantify the nuclear and cell changes associated with malignancy and provide an objective basis for grading dysplasia and tumors.

Aims and Objective:The aim of this study is to investigate the expression of p53 protein and Ki-67 antigen in normal oral mucosa and oral leukoplakia with different grades of dysplasia using immunohistochemistry and to clarify the correlation of the expression of these cell cycle regulatory proteins.Materials and Methods:A total of 20 archival tissue blocks obtained from our department which were diagnosed as mild (n = 5), moderate (n = 5), and severe dysplasia (n = 5) with normal mucosa (n = 5) as a control. Positivity of Ki-67 and p53 was analyzed using Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (IBM Corp. Released 2013. IBM SPSS Statistics for Windows, Version 22.0 Armonk, NY:IBM Corp) software.Results:All samples showed positive staining for p53 and Ki-67. Statistically significant difference (P < 0.05) was seen between the frequency of occurrence of p53 and Ki-67 pattern of expression among all the groups. The intensity of staining was mild to intense in basal layer as there was a progression toward the severity of the disease. Almost 81.1% correlation existed between p53 and Ki-67 with high correlation and marked relationship.Conclusion:Oral leukoplakia represents the most common oral potentially malignant disorder (OPMD). Molecular biological markers such as p53 and Ki-67 are considered to be of great value in the diagnosis and prognostic evaluation of OPMD. Our results emphasize the potential use of p53 protein and Ki-67 antigen as significant molecular markers for early detection of PMDs and its risk of developing oral squamous cell carcinoma.

One challenging feature of head and neck pathology is that a dizzying array of sarcomatoid lesions occurs here ranging all the way from reactive to malignant and very aggressive. This makes accurate diagnosis critical. These lesions are quite diverse with great clinical and biological heterogeneity. Some are malignant while many others are benign or simply reactive in nature. For example; at mucosal sites, a well known lesion is spindle cell carcinoma (SpCC), which are overtly malignant, and the differential diagnosis then includes a number of different malignant spindle cell lesions. However, there are several benign or even non-neoplastic lesions that can sometimes be difficult to discern from SpCC, e.g. Nodular fasciitis, Proliferative myositis, Cellular schwannoma, Benign fibrous histiocytoma, Carcino sarcoma, Sarcomatoid melanoma. Fracture callus, etc. Aim of Study: There is a diagnostic challenge to the oral pathologists to differentiate dizzying array of sarcoma like lesions from other similar microscopic simulates ranging all the way from reactive to malignant and very aggressive. This article aims to review the sarcomatoid lesions of the head and neck region with emphasis on differential diagnosis histologically and immunohistochemicaly.

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