Malignant oral-maxillary neoplasm in children and adolescents. A retrospective analysis from the biopsy service at a school of dentistry in Argentina.

There are few studies on oral-maxillary lesions in children and adolescents, and reports on malignant neoplasms are scarce. Comparison of available data is difficult due to the different criteria and racial-ethnic origin of the populations in each study. The aim of this work was to perform a retrospective study of malignant oral neoplasms in patients aged up to 20 years diagnosed at a center specialized in histopathological diagnosis of oral diseases between 1990 and 2005. The 24 retrieved cases accounted for 0.9% (n: 2434) of total biopsies in this age group during that period, and for 8.4% (n: 236) of the tumors. Mean age of the whole population was 9.2 years with even distribution according to sex. The most frequent tumor types were extranodal non-Hodgkin lymphoma (7 cases), osteosarcoma (4 cases) and Ewing sarcoma (3 cases). These data can be considered representative of our population of children and adolescents and serve as a basis for recognition and presumptive diagnosis in clinical practice.