Why Use the Oral Assessment Guide to Assess the Oral Cavity in Children Undergoing Antineoplastic Treatment?

We previously published in the Pesquisa Brasileira em Odontopediatria e Clnica Integrada a case series of nine pediatric patients with Acute Leukemias who developed severe oral mucositis (SOM) at the first week of chemotherapy.In this study, the monitoring of the oral cavity was performed using the modified Oral Assessment Guide (m-OAG), making it possible to identify oscillations in the oral mucositis (OM) during the initial phase of cancer treatment [1].A recent systematic review aimed to evaluate the methods used for assessing OM in pediatric oncology patients, and it verified that m-OAG was used in 4.4% of the studies included in this review.Therefore, noted that m-OAG has been less widely adopted to assess OM in pediatric and adolescent oncological patients [2].Considering this scenario, we propose highlighting some positive aspects of m-OAG use in these patients.To this end, we will briefly consider mucositis and the methods used for its assessment.Oral mucositis is the most common adverse effect of cancer treatment and, histologically, consists of direct or indirect damages in the epithelium of the oral mucosa (especially the non-keratinized) and submucosal.