Early professional oral health care interventions improve oral mucosal lesions in hematopoietic stem cell transplant recipients

Abstract

 Severe oral mucosal lesions are frequently observed during hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT). We investigated the improvement of oral mucosal lesions in patients before and after introducing professional oral health care (POHC) interventions prior HSCT. We retrospectively investigated 107 recipients of HSCT. Logistic regression analysis was used to evaluate the severity of oral mucosal lesions as an objective variable, and POHC interventions prior to transplantation, age, sex, stem cell source of transplantation, intensity of conditioning regimen, prior history of transplantation, total body irradiation, post-transplant methotrexate (MTX), and risk of recurrence as explanatory variables. As a result, oral mucosal lesions were proven to be correlated with POHC interventions prior to transplantation (p=0.006 ; odds ratio[OR], 0.307) and post-transplant MTX (p=0.007 ; OR, 3.291). This suggests that POHC interventions prior to HSCT and oral hygiene instructions to patients are effective in improving the severity of oral mucosal lesions during HSCT.