To investigate the diagnostic usefulness of vital staining with iodine solution (JG staining) in the oral cavity, we analyzed inter-examiner reliability and the results of examinations by either direct inspection or JG staining in detecting a range of oral dysplastic lesions. Color photographs of 21 oral dysplastic lesions obtained before and after JG staining were prepared for the study. Three oral surgeons with different clinical experience evaluated a range of lesions on photographs displayed at random, without any information about the lesions. The examination with JG staining showed a high intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) of 0.90, as compared with 0.62 without staining. Comparative study of the results obtained by inspection and those obtained by JG staining showed that the lesions were usually overestimated by inspection alone. Under the conditions of this study, our results suggest that JG staining might be useful for the diagnosis of a range of dysplastic lesions. Our findings also suggested that lesions would be overestimated by inspection alone.
