Prevalence of Oral Lesions and Normal Variants of the Oral Mucosa in 12 to 15-year-old Students in Tehran, Iran

Objectives: There are relatively few systematic studies, documenting the prevalence of mucosal disorders in children and adolescents.The purpose of this study was to determine the prevalence of oral lesions in 12- to 15-year olds living in ehran and to assess the possible relationship between the occurrence of these lesions and gender.Methods: A cross-sectional study was designed in which 1020 adolescents were participated. The sample size was based upon an expected oral lesion prevalence of 25%, a precision of 0.05 and a con􀂿dence level of 99. Epi-info version 6.0 was used for statistical analysis. Results: Two hundred eighty-six adolescents (28.0%) were diagnosed with at least one oral mucosal lesion at the time of the examination.The prevalence of any oral mucosal lesion was 29.2% among the boys and 26.9% among the girls. With the exception of melanotic macules, there were no statistically signi􀂿cant differences in oral mucosal lesion prevalence by gender.Conclusion: More than 28% of the adolescents were found to have at least one oral mucosal lesion. Melanotic macule was found to be proportionally more common in boys than girls.