The Prevalence of Tongue Lesions in the Outpatients of Kementah Dental Centre

Introduction: Tongue has been considered as a good reflection of systemic disease since Hippocrates time. However, localized, non-systemic tongue lesions are more commonly encountered. Materials and methods: A total of 200 walked in patients (89 males, 112 females, aged 10-59 years, mean age 34.2) were examined during the period of July - September 2009 in Kementah Dental Centre. Results: Tongue lesions was found in 90 of the 200 examined subjects with 13 (6.5%) subjects presented with more than one lesions, 4 have coated and fissured tongue; 4 with coated and crenation tongue; 2 presented with crenation tongue and partial angkyloglossia; 2 with fissured and crenation tongue, and one with fissured and partial angkyloglossia. Coated tongue was the commonest tongue lesion found with a prevalence of 45%, followed by crenation tongue (30%), partial ankyloglossia (21%), fissured tongue (18 %), geographic tongue (7%), and hairy tongue (2%). 43 (21.5%) of the subjects were smokers. Only 13 (6.5%) of the subjects were taking medications, mostly oral contraceptive pills. Conclusions: The prevalence of tongue lesions in this survey is 45% with coated tongue as the commonest which in turn were seen mostly in smokers (73% of male coated tongue were smokers). In this study. tongue lesion was more common in men (55% in male compared to 35% in female). No specific tongue lesion was seen in patients who are taking medications due to small sample size. Keywords: tongue lesions, prevalence, outpatients