Dental health, conditioning and oral mucositis in allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation: a single-center study

Oral mucositis (OM) is a severe adverse effect of conditioning treatments preceding allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (allo-HSCT). Despite the high incidence of OM in transplant recipients, there is a lack of effective strategies for risk assessment. The aim of this study was to identify risk factors for OM development and evaluate the significance of oral health prior to allo-HSCT. A retrospective analysis of 242 adult patients receiving allo-HSCT was conducted, grading OM occurrence and severity using the World Health Organization scale. Furthermore, a radiographic assessment score was introduced to measure dental damage and restoration status in patients undergoing HSCT. In this cohort, 51.24% of patients developed clinically significant OM, with a mean grade of 1.1 (±1.3 standard deviation). Additionally, OM severity correlated with the total body irradiation dose (P < 0.0001). Among the 61 patients evaluated for dental treatment before HSCT, a significantly higher proportion developed OM (93.2%; P < 0.0001). Moreover, we observed that higher pretransplant dental damage was associated with more severe OM (P = 0.039). These findings provide a rationale for a detailed pretransplant dental examination to assess OM risk in HSCT recipients.