Oral Squamous Cells and Age Estimation in Exfoliative Cytology with Hematoxylin and Eosin Stain– A Quantitative Study

Introduction: Exfoliative cytology in age estimation is a simple, painless, less invasive collection of exfoliative cells from epithelial layers, used as a diagnostic aid for age estimation. The oral cavity is an ideal site for exfoliative epithelial cells with a physiological turnover of cells, turnover decreases as the age increases show age variation with cellular morphological changes. Age estimation is one of the important factors to identify an individual and also helps to know the chronological age of a person.

Aim: To analyze and estimate the age from buccal smear and comparing the average cellular size under Image morphometric analysis.

Materials and Methods: Buccal mucosal smears are taken using a wooden spatula in gentle motion of scraping and smeared on a clean glass slide and fixed in 95% ethanol immediately after smearing a minimum of around 15 minutes and stained with Haematoxylin and eosin stain. After staining, the cells were observed by microscope and measured by a paint tool. Pearson correlation analysis was done using SPSS software.

Results: The cell and nuclear size difference values observed using a Pearson correlation coefficient were statistically significant with p value<0.05 revealing that there is shrinkage in cells with increase in age.

Conclusion: Exfoliative cytology is a successful and vastly growing technology that is used for the detection of premalignant lesions.