Objective:

To establish a correlation amongst clinical, radiographic and histological characteristics of dental apical lesions at the time of diagnosis.

Material and methods:

A descriptive study which undertook to establish comparison of clinical and radiographic characteristics with histopathological study of lesions. Included in the study were samples of individuals which had been previously diagnosed with periapical disease processes; samples were harvested from apicoectomies and dental extractions. In order to achieve histological diagnosis, a pathologist routinely processed and assessed all specimens.

Results:

50% of all samples were diagnosed as apical periodontitis, followed by periapical cysts (28.5%). An association of (p = 0.01) was found when correlating clinical characteristics such as sensitivity to percussion and spontaneous pain. The same situation arose when relating vertical bone loss to dental mobility (p = 0.023), and dental mobility with affected tooth (p = 0.036), nevertheless, no association was found with correlation of patient’s symptomatic status, such as spontaneous pain, and type of predominant inflammatory infiltrate in the lesions (p = 1.4), nevertheless, association was found with the secondary infiltrate type existing in them (p = 0.057). Dental mobility was taken as diagnostic marker for granuloma and periapical cyst (p = 0.025).

Conclusions:

Certain clinical markers were found with the ability to predict histological manifestation of the lesions, such as dental mobility for granuloma and periapical cyst cases. Nevertheless, exact prediction of each one of the diseases is still dificult to obtain, this is due to the lesion’s dynamics and the scarce correlation existing among clinical and radiographic characteristics with the histological description of the lesions.