Preface

Oral pathology is a specialized medical branch that is continuously evolving, thanks to the expansion of current knowledge and increasing clinical experience.

Progressive patient care in oral medicine requires a thorough knowledge of many disciplines of medicine and dentistry. Similarly, other related medical branches benefit from their understanding and insight into overall patient management. Therefore, a key aspect of this branch is that it bridges the gap between dentistry and medicine. For this reason, the authors have chosen the lip as the anatomical district of interest because, even today, there is no clarity on the relevance of the specialized medical figure. Often, patients do not know that it pertains to the oral cavity; therefore, the dentists specializing in oral pathology and often dermatologists, not being specialized in this anatomical field, do not have great expertise in these pathologies that also have manifestations in the mucous membranes of the oral cavity.

Therefore, the primary objective of this atlas is to provide the reader with a very didactic text that is easy to read and a quick reference that aims to update the most common pathologies of the oral cavity with lip manifestation.

Furthermore, the importance of the diagnosis of some pathologies, including actinic cheilitis, was underlined, due to the risk of neoplastic evolution. In the text, some lip manifestations of systemic immunological diseases have been extensively discussed, including lichen planus, erythema multiforme, pemphigus vulgaris, and vitiligo, which, if not diagnosed, can have very serious outcomes.

Finally, the last chapter is a brief overview of our outpatient clinical practice, based on the treatment of the most common lip diseases by phototherapy and photodynamic therapy (PDT), which are widely chosen by patients for their advantages over other surgical and pharmacological ablative therapies. We trust you will enjoy reading and using this little atlas as much as we enjoyed writing it.