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Why Bring Oral Pathologies to Your Oral Surgeon’s Attention

While oral pathologies can be cancerous, your oral and maxillofacial professional can rule out many others that are noncancerous and that will not spread or metastasize to other parts of the body. You should always check out any abnormality you find in your mouth, but the good news may well be that many conditions are benign.

Oral Pathologies

Oral Pathologies Abound in Your Mouth

Your mouth is subject to cell growth, tumors, and cysts that comes from many sources, including salivary glands, teeth and gums, temporomandibular joints, facial muscles, and the perioral skin around the mouth. Such medical and dental problems have become the dental specialty of oral and maxillofacial pathology.

Some of the most well-known oral pathologies are gum diseases such as gingivitis, which can turn into peritonitis if not treated. Oral pathologies can also manifest themselves as a variety of benign tumors, which the doctor will examine by doing a culture, smear, or biopsy to make sure that they are not cancerous. He will then prescribe medications that are applied directly to the affected area of the mouth.

Common Oral Pathologies

The disorders of the mouth can be considered bacterial, viral, fungal, traumatic, and more, dependent on their cause. Some of the most common include:

  • Hyperplasias, increase in the number of normal cells, can result from irritation or injury to tissues of the oral cavity. They can result in fibromas, a round smooth growth attached anywhere in the oral cavity or as a pyogenic granuloma, a reddish smooth growth that often forms on the gums.
  • Papillomas, often the result of the HPV virus, are wart-like growths developed from epithelial cells that line the oral cavity.
  • Pleomorphic adenoma are slow-growing, painless masses that develop from the salivary glands.
  • Soft tissue tumors develop in soft tissues beneath the lining of the mouth. Some common tumors can effect lymphatic vessels, blood vessels, nerve tissue, and fatty tissue.
  • Benign bone tumors develop in the jaw bones. They can also develop as osteomas found on the skull or facial bones or ossified fibromas on the jawbone.
  • Oral candidiasis (NICE) or thrush, which results in white patches with the cheesy-looking appearance can bring on burning, irritation, or soreness.
  • Herpes simplex virus (HSV) or cold sores leads to infectious blisters about the mouth in 10% of those who are infected. Stress, menstrual periods, trauma, or physical stress can bring about reoccurrences once you’ve had the HSV virus.
  • Traumatic disorders can result from thermal, chemical, mechanical or electrical damage to soft tissues, which results in oral ulcers.

Treating Oral Pathologies

Some of the dozens of types of oral pathologies appear without reason, and are painless; some, such as lymphomas, canker sores, and certain tongue inflammations (geographic tongue) require no treatment. However, if you have oral pathologies of any type, you should see your dentist to verify that you have no serious problem.

When you need to check or treat oral pathologies, contact Oral & Maxillofacial Surgery of Utah.

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