title: Occurrence of leukoplakia and some other oral white lesions among 20,333 adult Swedish people.
abstract: Among 20,333 people aged 15 yr or above, the prevalences of oral white lesions were calculated based on a partly new classification. The total prevalences were: cheek and lip biting 5.1%, smoker's palate 1.1%, frictional white lesion 5.5%, snuff dipper's lesion 8.0%, preleukoplakia 6.4% and leukoplakia 3.6%. If all these lesions were pooled, the prevalence was 24.8% and if only the entities cheek and lip biting and smoker's palate were excluded it became 20.1%. If weak "preleukoplakic" lesions were excluded from the latter figure the prevalence for marked whitish lesions was 13.8%. Etiologic and clinical subgroups of leukoplakia showed the following prevalences: using the etiologic subgroups, idiopathic leukoplakia 0.7% and tobacco-associated leukoplakia 2.9%; using the clinical subgroups, homogeneous leukoplakia 3.5% and non-homogeneous leukoplakia 0.3%. The intraoral location pattern of leukoplakias was preponderant in the commissural and buccal areas. However, the idiopathic leukoplakias showed a somewhat more even distribution and thus a more similar distribution to that of oral cancer.
authors.forename: T
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Axéll
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007972:Leukoplakia, Oral / Q000453:epidemiology* / Q000209:etiology; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009059:Mouth Diseases / Q000453:epidemiology*; D009061:Mouth Mucosa / Q000293:injuries; D012907:Smoking; D013548:Sweden