Forum for Clinical and Surgical Oral Pathology

Case BBOPF 08-7

Dr. Charles Dunlap (School of Dentistry, University of Missouri – Kansas City, USA) has an intriguing case and would like to know if you have seen anything like this before. Representative microscopic sections are included. Any suggestions about the nature of the material in question will be highly apperciated. This case will be on display from October 31 to November 7, 2008. A summary of the responses will be posted in BBOP.

Clinical History

An adult claimed sandy things came out of his tongue. He did in fact have some mucosal redundancy on the lateral borders of his tongue with sporadic ulcers but I could not recognize a specific disease and he did not wish to have a biopsy. He collected the "things" (they were several weeks in collection and dry when we received them) and we dutifully prepared sections (see microscopic images below).

Have you seen anything like this before? What is it?

Images

[Click for a larger image] Figure 1 - 200x	[Click for a larger image] Figure 2 - 400x
[Click for a larger image] Figure 3 - 630x	[Click for a larger image] Figure 4 - 630x polarized
[Click for a larger image] Figure 5 - 1000x

Case prepared by Dr. Alfredo Aguirre (BBOP Manager) and Daniel Emmer (Web Administrator, University at Buffalo School of Dental Medicine).