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Introduction: A major pitfall of many of the established oral epithelial dysplasia (OED) grading criteria is their lack of reproducibility and accuracy to predict malignant transformation. The main objective of this study was to determine whether calibration of practicing oral pathologists on OED grading could improve the reproducibility of the WHO 2017 and the binary OED grading systems. Methods: A nationwide online exercise was carried out to determine the influence of calibration on the reproducibility of the WHO 2017 and the binary OED grading systems. Results: A significant improvement was observed in the inter‐observer agreement for the WHO 2017 OED grading system (K 0.196 vs. 0.448; Kw 0.357 vs. 0.562) after the calibration exercise. The significant difference (p = 0.027) in the level of agreement between those with five or more years and less than 5 years of experience was no more observed (p = 0.426) after the calibration exercise. The percent agreement for binary grading was significantly higher (91.8%) for buccal mucosal lesions as compared to lesions on the tongue after the calibration exercise. Conclusion: This study validates the significance of calibration in improving the reproducibility of OED grading. The nationwide exercise resulted in a statistically significant improvement in the inter‐observer agreement for the WHO 2017 OED grading system among a large number of oral pathologists. It is highly recommended that similar exercises should be organized periodically by professional bodies responsible for continuing education among oral pathologists to improve the reliability of OED grading for optimal treatment of oral potentially malignant disorders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous studies found that ethnicity influences oral cancer patients' survival; however, most studies were limited to certain ethnic groups particularly from the West, thus of limited relevance to Asians where the disease is most prevalent. We investigated the relationship between ethnicity and patient survival in multi-racial Malaysia. 5-year survival rate was 40.9%. No statistically significant difference was observed in survival between Malays, Chinese, Indians and Indigenous peoples (45.7%, 44.0%, 41.3%, 27.7% respectively). Increased tumor size, lymph node involvement and advanced tumor were predictive of poor survival. We conclude that ethnicity has no effect on survival or its prognostic indicators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Infection of the oral cavity with high-risk human papillomavirus (HPV) has been implicated as one of the risk factors for the development of oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC). Among the high-risk HPV types, HPV 16 and 18 are the most common infective agents in oral cancers. This study aimed to compare the presence of high-risk HPV in genetic materials obtained from saliva, blood and tissues of OSCC patients in Malaysia. The genomic DNA was extracted from saliva (n=13), blood (n=59) and tissue (n=63) and subjected to polymerase chain reaction (PCR) amplification of human beta globin gene to confirm the presence and integrity of DNA. Positive amplification was then screened for high-risk HPV by nested PCR using MY11/09 and GP5+/6+ consensus primers, followed by a further confirmation by DNA sequencing of the positive samples. As a result, two saliva samples (2/13; 15.4%) were found to harbour HPV 16 and one tissue sample (1/63; 1.6%) was shown to be positive for HPV 18. However, none of the blood samples were positive for high-risk HPV. Thus, HPV is more likely to be found in the saliva of OSCC patients as compared to blood and tissue samples. The detection of high-risk HPV in OSCC patients is useful in deciding how to manage the patient as HPV-associated OSCC has better prognosis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a study which examines the significance of institutional HIV dental care cost estimation and planning for HIV/AIDS infected persons in Malaysia. The study estimated marginal cost for dental treatment based on the case scenario of prison X and formed an integrated cost planning model. The study found that cost estimation coupled with the integrated cost planning model is essential in enhancing budget allocation, evaluation, and monitoring of HIV dental care costs for inmates.

The incidence of oral cancer is high for those of Indian ethnic origin in Malaysia. Various clinical and pathological data are usually used in oral cancer prognosis. However, due to time, cost and tissue limitations, the number of prognosis variables need to be reduced. In this research, we demonstrated the use of feature selection methods to select a subset of variables that is highly predictive of oral cancer prognosis. The objective is to reduce the number of input variables, thus to identify the key clinicopathologic (input) variables of oral cancer prognosis based on the data collected in the Malaysian scenario. Two feature selection methods, genetic algorithm (wrapper approach) and Pearson's correlation coefficient (filter approach) were implemented and compared with single-input models and a full-input model. The results showed that the reduced models with feature selection method are able to produce more accurate prognosis results than the full-input model and single-input model, with the Pearson's correlation coefficient achieving the most promising results.