COVID-19 and oral lesions, short communication and review

Sonia Egido-Moreno; Joan Valls-Roca-Umbert; Enric Jané-Salas; José López-López; Albert Estrugo-Devesa

doi:10.4317/jced.57981

COVID-19 and oral lesions, short communication and review

J Clin Exp Dent. 2021 Mar 1;13(3):e287-e294. doi: 10.4317/jced.57981. eCollection 2021 Mar.

Authors

Sonia Egido-Moreno¹, Joan Valls-Roca-Umbert², Enric Jané-Salas³, José López-López⁴, Albert Estrugo-Devesa³

Affiliations

¹ DDS. Professor of Oral Pathology. Department of Odontostomatology. Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences (Dentistry), University of Barcelona. University Campus of Bellvitge, Barcelona, Spain.
² DDS, Professor of Master's degree, School of Dentistry, University of Barcelona. University Campus of Bellvitge, Barcelona, Spain.
³ PhD, DDS, MD. Professor of Oral Pathology. Department of Odontostomatology. Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences (Dentistry), University of Barcelona. University Campus of Bellvitge, Barcelona, Spain / Oral Health and Masticatory System Group (Bellvitge Biomedical Research Institute) IDIBELL, University of Barcelona, L'Hospitalet de Llobregat, Barcelona, Spain.
⁴ DDS, MD, PhD, Department of Odontoestomatology. Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences (School of Dentistry), University of Barcelona. University Campus of Bellvitge, Barcelona, Spain. / Dental Hospital University of Barcelona, (Barcelona University) / Oral Health and Masticatory System Group (Bellvitge Biomedical Research Institute) IDIBELL, Barcelona, Spain.

Abstract

Background: The COVID-19 disease first appeared in December 2019 in Wuhan, China. The World Health Organization (WHO) declared the pandemic in March 2020, with 40 million cases and a million deaths in October 2020. COVID-19 also includes manifestations on the skin and mucous mucosal membrane. Objective: To evaluate the prevalence of the oral lesions associated to COVID-19 disease; and evaluate their clinical presentation and the hypothesized etiology.

Material and methods: An electronic literature search was performed in PubMed, Scopus and Índice Médico Español databases. The following combination of keywords and Boolean operators were used: "COVID-19 AND oral manifestations"; "COVID-19 AND oral lesions"; "COVID-19 AND mucosal lesions" ; "COVID-19 AND mucosal manifestations"; "SARS-COV-2 AND oral manifestations"; "SARS-COV-2 AND oral lesions"; "SARS-COV-2 AND mucosal lesions"; "SARS-COV-2 AND mucosal manifestations". Furthermore, the bibliography was reviewed to manually include additional articles. The risk of bias in individual studies was assessed by two blinded reviewers using the Joanna Briggs Institute (JBI) and the evidence levels of the articles found will be cataloged according to the level of evidence and grade of recommendation of Oxford Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine (CEBM).

Results: 249 articles were found in the Medline / Pubmed database. There are no additional articles in the Scopus and Índice Médico Español databases. We selected 14 articles plus 5 more articles due to manual searching. Patients presented a wide variety of oral manifestations. The most prevalent were lesions with a solution of continuity (n = 48, 73.85%) and the most frequent area was the tongue (n = 41, 52.56%). The preferred treatment for the lesions is a localized one by using rinses.

Conclusions: To conclude, after the bibliographic review was performed, we can expect that the COVID-19 disease can cause cutaneous and mucosal lesions as secondary manifestations. Despite more studies being needed to confirm this. Key words:COVID-19, SARS-COV-2, oral lesions, oral manifestations.

Publication types

Review