Periapical Lesions: a Review of Clinical, Radiographic, and Histopathologic Features

Context: The essential role of a general dental practitioner is recognizing the nature of the oral cavity lesions. Periapical lesions, which are observed in radiographs of patients, may have odontogenic or nonodontogenic origins. This review aimed to study differential diagnosis of common and important periapical lesions. Evidence Acquisition: English-language literature were searched by manual and electronic search with the terms “periapical lesions”, “jaw neoplasms”, and “non-odontogenic lesions” in three data bases of MEDLINE, Google scholar, and SCOPUS among published studies since 2000 to 2013. All review articles, original articles, case reports, and case series were evaluated. Results: In this study, it has been showed that many periapical lesions have not endodontic origin and not healing by root canal therapy. Conclusions: The authors recommended to have paraclinical tests, especially vitality tests, in addition to clinical and radiographic examinations to avoid endodontic mistreatment. In suspicious cases, biopsy of lesions, referral to pathologist, and long-term fallow-up is required.