Purpose.
The goal of this paper is to find out the correlation, and evaluate the accuracy of labial minor salivary gland biopsy as a diagnostic tool in the multidisciplinary management of patients with Sjögren’s syndrome.
Patients and Methods.
Thirty seven patients referred to our outpatient office between January 2016 and December 2017 from a rheumatologist for biopsy examination, as part of the complex diagnostic plan for suspected Sjögren syndrome were included in the current study. Each specimen was examined histomorphometrically by the pathologist to calculate the focus score describing the degree of salivary gland inflammatory infiltration.
Results.
From the total number of patients, 25 presented with an established Sjögren syndrome diagnosis by fulfilling the revised American-European criteria. From those 15 had a positive lip biopsy. The rest 10 patients from the total group who were diagnosed with Sjögren syndrome based on the same criteria had a negative lip biopsy.
Conclusion.
The labial minor salivary gland biopsy is a valuable diagnostic tool to establish the diagnosis of Sjögren syndrome. However, a positive biopsy result must always be correlated with all the other diagnostic criteria to prove the exact diagnosis.
Accuracy of minor salivary gland biopsy in the diagnosis of Sjögren syndrome
