Oral condition of patients with leukemia and severe aplastic anemia. Follow-up 1 year after bone marrow transplantation.

Twenty patients with leukemia and seven patients with severe aplastic anemia who had been treated with bone marrow transplantation were investigated 1 year after transplantation to assess their oral condition. Ten patients had mild clinical chronic graft-versus-host disease (GVHD), and three patients had moderate or severe GVHD. Histopathologic changes in the oral mucosa or the minor salivary glands were observed in nineteen patients. Clinical changes in the oral mucosa were observed in sixteen of those patients. Colonization with Candida albicans was more frequent in patients with advanced histopathologic changes in oral mucosa. The numbers of Streptococcus mutans and lactobacilli and the whole salivary flow rate were not correlated to high or low caries incidence. Whole salivary flow rate were not correlated to GVHD but rather, to conditioning with total body irradiation (p less than 0.05).