Dysplasia

Carcinoma

Oral and maxillofacial pathology

Oral leukoplakia

Dermatology

Dentistry

Epithelial dysplasia

Basal cell

Thermodynamics

Physics

Homogeneous

Relative risk

Meta-analysis

Internal medicine

Malignant transformation

Leukoplakia

Confidence interval

Oncology

Medicine

Cancer

Pathology

Oral Diseases

Oral leukoplakia (OL) is the most frequently encountered oral potentially malignant disorder. The aims of this systematic review are to estimate the overall malignant transformation of OL and to assess the risk factors associated with malignant transformation of OL published in the last 5 years (2015-2020).We performed a bibliographic search in PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science, Embase, and Cochrane databases with keywords "oral leukoplakia", "oral cancer", "oral carcinoma" and "oral squamous cell carcinoma". Meta-analysis was conducted using a random-effects model.Twenty-four studies were selected, that reported a total of 16,604 patients. Malignant transformation proportion varied between 1.1% and 40.8%. Female gender, non-homogeneous clinical type, and presence of epithelial dysplasia were significantly related to MT. Other risk factors previously suggested did not show significant results.The pooled proportion of malignant transformation MT was 9.8% (95% CI: 7.9-11.7). It is necessary to continue to conduct well-designed prospective clinicopathological studies on OL, using a uniform definition for OL to reduce the risk of bias for evaluating various factors associated with the MT.

Malignant transformation of oral leukoplakia: Systematic review and meta‐analysis of the last 5 years