Surgical Science, 2013, 4, 210-212 http://dx.doi.org/10.4236/ss.2013.43039 Published Online March 2013 (http://www.scirp.org/journal/ss) Concordance between Clinical and Histopathological Diagnoses at Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital Oral and Maxillofacial Unit Alexander Acheampong Oti * , Peter Donkor, Solomon Obiri-Yeboah, Michael Yelibora Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital, Kumasi, Ghana Email: * aotiacheampong@yahoo.com Received December 27, 2012; revised January 31, 2013; accepted February 10, 2013 ABSTRACT Background: Accurate diagnosis of orofacial tumours is important as this determines the treatment options as well as the eventual treatment outcome. Agreement between clinical and histopathological diagnosis becomes important in this regard. Aims: The aim was to determine the level of agreement between clinical and histopathology diagnosis of orofa- cial lesions. Method: This is a retrospective study of all histopathology reports seen at KATH maxillofacial unit. Thedata collected included, clinical diagnosis and histological diagnosis. Results: A total of 567 histopathology reports were evaluated. The percentage of agreement between clinical and histopathological diagnosis was 62.8%. Conclusion: The agreement between clinical and histopathological diagnosis was high. However clinicians cannot rely on only the clinical diagnosis in managing patients. Keywords: Histopathology; Biopsy; Concordance; Diagnosis 1. Introduction The maxillofacial region is a common anatomic site for the development of infections, cysts and tumours of odon- togenic or non-odontogenic origin. Oral mucosal lesions are commonly encountered in clinical practice [1]. Squamous cell carcinoma constitutes a major health problem in developing countries, representing a major cause of death [2], although it represents only 2% - 4% of all malignancies [3]. The major factor in the lack of improvement in prognosis over the years is the fact that cases of oral carcinoma are not diagnosed or managed until they are advanced. This diagnostic delay may be caused either by patients (who may not report unusual oral features) or by health care workers (who may not investigate observed lesions thoroughly). In another study at KATH, Donkor [4] looked at a total of 50 pa- tients who presented with squamous cell carcinoma; ma- jority had advanced lesions which according to him ac- counted for the poor treatment outcome. In a UK study, it was observed that, the clinical diag- nosis of general dental practitioners had a concordance of 49.4% with histological diagnosis, while specialists had 51.0%, giving an average of 50.6% for the two groups [5]. This is similar to the findings of Williams [6] of 56.4% concordance for general practitioners. Seoane [7] found a high level of agreement between oral and maxil- lofacial surgeons and general dental practitioners on di- agnosis of inflammatory, benign and precancerous lesions but low level of agreement in diagnosing oral cancer. There is currently no study that establishes a correla- tion between clinical and histopathology diagnosis of orofacial tumours and tumour-like lesions in Ghana. The aim was to determine the level of agreement between cli- nical and histopathology diagnosis of orofacial lesions. In a developing country like Ghana where there is scar- city of histopathological services, it is important to know the accuracy of our clinical diagnosis to help in the man- agement of orofacial lesions. 2. Method and Statistics This was a retrospective study of all histopathology re- ports seen at KATH maxillofacial unit from 1999 to Oc- tober 2010. This study looked at the clinical and histopa- thological diagnosis of biopsy specimen. Data was en- tered into excel spreadsheet for cleaning and then to SPSS for descriptive analysis of data. 3. Results A total sample size of 567 met the inclusion criteria for the histopathological and clinical diagnosis study. The age range was 5 to 84 years with a mean age of 34.6 (SD * Corresponding author. Copyright © 2013 SciRes. SS