الفهرس 
LITERATURE REVIEWOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
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Abstract
In the oral cavity a white patch or an erythematous area may have varied differential diagnoses ranging from hyperkeratosis, a premalignant lesion, to a frank carcinoma. An erythematous lesion, whether homogeneous or not, is more likely to become malignant than a whitish lesion. Oral lichen planus has also been suggested to show a certain percentage of malignant transformation.
Angiogenesis has been defined as the growth of new blood vessels from preexisting vessels. It is an essential process in numerous physiological and pathological processes, including premalignant and malignant oral lesions, as well as inflammatory diseases.
It is evident that angiogenesis is not only essential for tumor growth, but it is also implicated in the initial progression from a pre-malignant lesion to a fully invasive cancer, and in the growth of dormant micrometastases into clinically detectable metastatic lesions.
The evaluation of the proliferation rate of oral lesions brings important information, particularly in premalignant and malignant lesions, as the proliferation capacity may be one of the first indicators of malignant transformation. Proliferation markers have been used, among which AgNOR has been applied in various fields to study cancer cell proliferation.
This study was aimed, first to investigate the clinical features of patients with oral mucosal red and white lesions, second to investigate the expression of CD34 endothelial antigen in those lesions, and third to investigate the expression of AgNOR proteins in the same lesions.
Thirty cases of oral mucosal red and white lesions were collected and included in the study for the evaluation of MVD and mAgNOR count, fifteen cases were males and fifteen were females. Seventeen lesions were located in the buccal mucosa, five on the tongue, three on the labial mucosa, two on the gingiva, two on the retromolar area, and one on the alveolar ridge.