Abstract

   Oral Submucous Fibrosis is a premalignant condition affecting a considerable population around the world. The surge in the use of arecanut and tobacco products has led to monumental rise in young patients complaining of trismus and inability to eat. Although, the condition can be effectively managed through surgery followed by physiotherapy, its incessant subclinical progression often restores the intraoral fibrosis once physiotherapy is discontinued, most commonly due to pain. In this respect, it was intriguing to notice many such patients eliciting an elongated styloid process which may be consequent to activation of Transforming Growth Factor -beta due to chronic trauma or inflammation. This growth factor is also involved in marked deposition of collagen forming intraoral fibrous bands. Hence, if a definite association can be delineated between the two conditions, through radiographic examination on an orthopantomogram, clinicians can be alerted to diagnose an elongated styloid process whenever a case of oral submucous fibrosis presents in the clinical practice. This simple yet significant protocol shall eliminate a prominent cause of pain during mouth opening exercises thus making the chances of treatment failure negligible.

Keywords: Oral Submucous Fibrosis (OSF); Elongated Styloid Process (ESP); Transforming Growth Factor -Beta (TGF-β); Orthopantomogram (OPG)

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Citation

Citation: Shital Patel., et al. “Oral Submucous Fibrosis and Elongated Styloid Process - Do they have an Alarming Inter-Connection??". Acta Scientific Otolaryngology 2.11 (2020): 39-41.

Copyright

Copyright: © 2020 Shital Patel., et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.