Clinical Study of Five Cases of Langerhans Cell Histiocytosis Occured in the Jaws

Abstract

Lichtenstein concluded that eosinophilic granuloma, Hand-Schuüller-Christian disease, and Letterer-Siwe disease were essentially based on the same pathogenesis and grouped these three lesions within the category of histiocytosis X.
This grouping is based on the assumption that the three entities are all associated with involvement of the reticuloendothelial system (reticulum cells of the bone marrow, spleen, lymph nodes, liver, and histiocytes and macrophages of connective tissue). But lately, electronmicroscopic observations showed a number of proliferating histiocytic cells in these diseases and these cells seemed to be Langerhans cells characterized by the presence of Birbeck granules which many authors tend to refer to as Langerhans cell histiocytosis.
We clinically studied five patients (two men and three women) with Langerhans cell hystiocytosis in the oral and maxillofacial region who had a medical examination in our department between 1992 and 2007. The patients were 10 months to 65 years of age at the time of their first visit to our department. One patient died from another disease during the course of the study and four patients remain alive.