The nuclear cytoplasmic ratio analysis of smoker’s oral mucous epithelium cells

Background: Smoking has side effects for the body that one of them may manifest as malignancy in the oral cavity. One of the main contributing factors that trigger malignancy is carcinogenic substances. These carcinogens can cause malignancy that may be detected through the changes of cells in form of an increase of diameter of the nucleus and the nuclear cytoplasm ratio (N/C-R). Objective: To evaluate the N/C-R value of the oral mucous epithelium of academic community smokers at Universitas Trisakti. Methods: This research is an analytical observational study through exfoliate cytology procedure used scrapping technique and Papanicolaou staining to evaluate the nuclear, cytoplasmic diameters, and N/C-R value of oral mucous epithelium cells. This study involved 60 subjects divided into two groups: 30 smokers and 30 non-smokers. Cells evaluation at three fields of each cytology slide was done by measuring the diameter of nucleus, cytoplasm and N/C-R of each cell that is not undergoing micro nucleus neither karyorrhexis or karyopyknosis. Results: There was no significant difference in the N/C-R (p=0,156>0,05) between the smoker and non-smoker group even the N/C-R value of the smoker group is higher (0,19+0,03908>0,18+0,02618). Conclusion: It was observed that smokers have a higher N/C-R value compared to those of non-smokers with no significant difference and still in the range of normal N/C-R value.