title: Diagnostic Features of Common Oral Ulcerative Lesions: An Updated Decision Tree.
abstract: Diagnosis of oral ulcerative lesions might be quite challenging. This narrative review article aims to introduce an updated decision tree for diagnosing oral ulcerative lesions on the basis of their diagnostic features. Various general search engines and specialized databases including PubMed, PubMed Central, Medline Plus, EBSCO, Science Direct, Scopus, Embase, and authenticated textbooks were used to find relevant topics by means of MeSH keywords such as "oral ulcer," "stomatitis," and "mouth diseases." Thereafter, English-language articles published since 1983 to 2015 in both medical and dental journals including reviews, meta-analyses, original papers, and case reports were appraised. Upon compilation of the relevant data, oral ulcerative lesions were categorized into three major groups: acute, chronic, and recurrent ulcers and into five subgroups: solitary acute, multiple acute, solitary chronic, multiple chronic, and solitary/multiple recurrent, based on the number and duration of lesions. In total, 29 entities were organized in the form of a decision tree in order to help clinicians establish a logical diagnosis by stepwise progression.
authors: Department of Oral Medicine, School of Dentistry, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran.
authors: Hamed
authors: 0000-0002-0778-5299
authors: H
authors: Mortazavi
authors: Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Radiology, School of Dentistry, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran.
authors: Yaser
authors: Y
authors: Safi
authors: Department of Oral Medicine, School of Dentistry, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran.
authors: Maryam
authors: 0000-0002-9617-3488
authors: M
authors: Baharvand
authors: Department of Oral Medicine, School of Dentistry, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran.
authors: Somayeh
authors: 0000-0002-7277-465X
authors: S
authors: Rahmani