Clinical Study Clinical Evaluation of Specific Oral Manifestations in Pediatric Patients with Ascertained versus Potential Coeliac Disease: A Cross-Sectional Study

Copyright © 2014 Ennio Bramanti et al.This is an open access article distributed under theCreative CommonsAttribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Patients involved on coeliac disease (CD) have atypical symptoms and often remain undiagnosed. Specific oral manifestations are effective risk indicators of CD and for this reason an early diagnosis with a consequent better prognosis can be performed by the dentist. There are not researches analysing the frequency of these oral manifestations in potential coeliac patients. The aim of this study is to investigate the oral hard and soft tissue lesions in potential and ascertained coeliac children in comparison with healthy controls. 50 ascertained children, 21 potential coeliac patients, and 54 controls were recruited and the oral examination was performed. The overall oral lesions were more frequently present in CD patients than in controls. The prevalence of oral soft tissue lesions was 62 % in ascertained coeliac, 76.2 % in potential coeliac patients, and 12.96 % in controls