Odontogenic keratocyst - Did you know?

Odontogenic keratocyst (OKC) is the second most common developmental odontogenic cyst after dentigerous cyst. It makes up around 10% of all odontogenic cysts occurring in the oral cavity.

🤨 Is Odontogenic keratocyst - a cyst or a tumor?

This has always bothered Oral pathologists, for they considered OKC to be a cystic tumor - a cyst with the attributes of a tumor. These are some of the reasons why they thought so,

• OKC has an aggressive and destructive behavior as compared to other odontogenic cysts.

• Also, some OKCs have been reported to have genetic mutations in the PTCH1 and P53 genes giving it a greater growth potential.

Hence, after a lot of debate, the 2005 World Health Organization (WHO) monograph on Head and Neck tumors classified it as an odontogenic tumor and named it “Keratocystic odontogenic tumor (KCOT)”!

However, here’s the twist…

📝Recent updates on classification of OKC

The WHO consensus group in 2017, have however reinstated the name Odontogenic keratocyst and have reclassified the lesion as an odontogenic cyst. The group felt there was insufficient evidence to support its neoplastic nature. 

So here we are, back to renaming KCOT as OKC and classifying it under the Odontogenic cyst category :) Oh boy!

Is odontogenic keratocyst - a cyst or a tumor?

Reference

Speight PM, Takata T. New tumour entities in the 4th edition of the World Health Organization Classification of Head and Neck tumours: odontogenic and maxillofacial bone tumours. Virchows Arch. 2018 Mar;472(3):331-339.

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🔎You could dig deeper into the topic

In fact, we delve a lot more deeper into this topic in our cheatsheet/note -> Odontogenic Keratocyst. You could read in detail about Odontogenic Keratocyst with our Revision Ninja - Oral Pathology and Medicine Course bundle!

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💡Note

Apart from Notes, you could also get access to numerous MCQs and Videos with English captions/subtitles on various topics in Oral Pathology and Medicine.

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📚Other study resources on HackDentistry!

• Revision Ninja - Oral Histology (Notes, Videos & MCQs)

• Revision Ninja - Periodontics (Notes & MCQs)

• Question Bank (5000+ Questions)

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