Oral lichen planus

This is a skin disease-chronic damage of mucosal membrane; it can appear either in oral cavity or on the skin, both may also be infected simultaneously. In some cases (minority), it also can be seen at genital organs, finger and toe nails. The main special characteristic of this disease is appearance of flat, glossy and polygonal papilla, after fusing it may has lichen appearance where it get it??s name. The oral lichen planus happened due to pathological changes, clinically, its prognosis and many aspects are very different from skin lichen planus and therefore recently some people consider it as a single disease-different from skin lichen planus. The main feature of oral lichen planus is the appearance of pearl coloured stripes, such white stripes can extend to every direction or interlace to become net form, branch form, ring form and so on, or maybe yields spot clumps; sometimes it may has papilla, blister, erosion and other types of damage, sufferer may feels coarseness, pulling sensation or pain. The structural pathological change is hyperkeratosis accompanied by thickening of granular layer; death, liquefaction, denaturalization of young cells underneath; under those young cells?? membrane yields abundant of lymphocyte infiltration, those young cells maybe abnormal. In addition, oral lichen planus, by all means, has a certainty of risk of cancer especially those long term repeated erosion or atrophic cases, they have a higher risk of development of cancer; someone even substantially consider it as preceding changes of cancer. The western medicine, till now, cannot figure out the cause of this disease; the clinical and basal researches found out that this disease may be associated with viral or bacterial infection, inheritance, chronic hepatitis, stomach ulcer and other systemic diseases, as well as related to excessive of immune system. The main diagnoses of this disease are according to: white pearl coloured stripes or clumps of oral cavity, chronic course of illness and results of examination of structural pathological studies. This disease occurs in middle-aged women slightly more than men. The traditional Chinese medical doctors consider this disease similar as kou po (worn out of oral cavity), kou mi (rotten oral cavity). This disease occurs due to emotional stress internally and climate influences externally. For example, over thinking, injury of stomach and spleen, improper function of spleen, imbalance of internal heat regulation, then heat is accumulated and caused dryness and consequently resulted in thickening of the mucosal membrane, white stripes, erosion; external weather influences became heat in inner body and ascended to the oral cavity might also worsen the disease. The spleen hosts the muscle system, begins in the oral cavity; liver controls the ventilation (releasing), anger will cause bad effect to the liver, liver Yang excessive and injured blood s Yin, further increased the dryness, therefore this disease is blamed on the route of spleen and liver.Clinical treatment resultsThere were 1000 cases adopted traditional Chinese medical therapy; excluding 9 cases which stopped taking of medicine, others all completely recovered (erosion healed, disappearance of congested stripes, disappearance of greyish whitish strip or mostly disappeared) 986 cases and 5 cases shown effectiveness (erosion healed, erythema congestion basically disappeared or its surface diminished, lightened symptoms, white strips partially disappeared, colour lightened).