The burning sensation most commonly occurs while taking hot and spicy foods or in some cases the normal food may cause burning mouth sensation. The blanching of oral mucosa occurs due to reduced vascularity and increased fibrosis that gives a marble like appearance of oral mucosa. The spicy food containing capsaicin may be the reason of burning and vesicle formation in a patient of OSMF. In early cases of OSMF it involves the buccal mucosa, labial mucosa and in later stages involves tongue, soft palate and larynx. In advanced cases the fibrotic band restricts the mouth opening to such an extent that patient has difficulty in chewing, swallowing, speech and to maintaining the normal oral hygiene. Development of fibrotic band around the lips, commisure and buccal mucosa make lip thick ,difficulty in everting the lips, buccal mucosa fibrosis make it thick and rigid the fibrotic band around the lips and cheek make even the examination of oral cavity difficult. Patients are unable to whistle or blow in advanced cases. They lack the regular elasticity of oral mucosa. Involvement of tongue leads to depapillation as well as fibrosis and blanching around the lateral border of tongue. Hard palate involvement leads to blanching of the mucosa and soft palate including uvula involvement leads to shrunken uvula. In extreme cases Eustachian tube also gets …show more content…
The Total 4200 patients were screened for their habits and found that 1092(26%) subjects have habit of tobacco or pan-masala chewing. They were divided into three categories. One is only pan masala including betel quid chewer and second are tobacco and its related product chewer and third one having habit of both. This is done to evaluate the role of pan masala and tobacco independently as factor in OSMF. The exclusion criteria include no any debilitating/systemic disease like diabetes, any liver or kidney disease or any kind of acute or chronic infections. The diagnostic criteria for the OSMF as laid by various authors are, Patients who has complaint of burning sensation while taking hot and spicy food, vesiculation on the oral mucosa specially palate11,ulceration or generalized recurrent inflammation of the oral mucosa, excessive salivation, defective gustatory sensation and dryness of mouth12 , blanching and stiffness with palpable bands on labial, buccal mucosa, soft palate, hard palate mucosa as well as restricted moth opening, inability to blow out cheek and difficulty in protruding tongue etc were regarded as having oral submucous