Incidence of Esophageal Lichen Planus in Patients With Known Oral Lichen Planus. Diagnostic Value of White Light Endoscopy, Narrow Band Imaging and Chromoendoscopy for Detection of Esophageal Manifestation in Patients With Oral Lichen.

The lichen planus is a mucocutaneous disease of unknown etiology that manifests itself with an incidence of 1-2% in 30-70% of cases either at the mucosa of the mouth, or partly in combination with infection of the skin, the oral with his known premalignant potential in up to 2-3% predisposed to the development of an oral squamous cell carcinoma. In rare cases, there is also an manifestation of the lining of the esophagus, which can then be associated with symptomatic strictures of the esophagus. In addition, four cases have been reported with esophageal squamous cell carcinoma in patients with esophageal lichen planus.

The value of moreover increasingly established use of narrow-band imaging (a process for improving the detection of early cancers in the gastrointestinal tract by creating a maximum contrast between outright and altered mucosa, which could have already shown an improved detection rate of early lesions of the esophagus as well as squamous cell carcinoma), or the chromoendoscopy has means for example Lugol solution in correlation to the histopathologic findings in lichen planus), has not been investigated to date.

Also, data of the natural long-term outcome in esophageal lichen planus infestation especially in view of malignant transformation are currently not available.