Prevalence of Potentially Malignant Disorders of the Oral Cavity in Bhopal

Oral cancer is generally preceded by some benign lesions for a varying length of time. Many of them show high potential to become cancers, and therefore termed “precancerous”. Even though only small proportion of precancer actually progress to oral cancer, this development forms a source for over 70% of oral cancers in India Aims/Objectives: An epidemiological survey was conducted in the population of Bhopal city to estimate the prevalence of potentially malignant disorder of the oral cavity. Results: Our study comprised of total 2509 samples out of which males were 1354 (54%) and females were 1155 (46%). Out of these, 778 i.e. 31% of total sample size were habit positive, either chewing tobacco, chewing areca, smoking tobacco, and drinking alcohol or combinations of above. Out of these 778 habit positive cases, the habits were significantly higher in males; 87% were males and 13% were females. Conclusion: The multi-center cross-sectional study revealed that the deleterious habits in males showed prevalence of 87% and in females showed prevalence of 13%. The ratio of male : female prevalence was determined to be 7:1. This high incidence of PMDOC calls for urgent need to address the issues of tobacco chewing and raise awareness about oral cancer