Odontogenic tumors in children and adolescents. A 15-year retrospective study in Argentina.

There are few studies on bucco-maxillary lesions in children and adolescents, and reports on odontogenic tumors (OT) are scanty. Comparison among the available data is difficult due to differences in the criteria used in each study. The aim of the present work was to perform a retrospective study of OT in patients aged up to 20 years diagnosed at a center specialized in histopathologic diagnosis of oral diseases. All cases diagnosed with OT between 1990 and 2004 were retrieved from the Service archives. The 153 retrieved cases accounted for 7% of total biopsies performed during that period, and to 78.4% of tumors of the jaws. Mean age of the whole population was 12.7 years and the male to female ratio was 2:1. The most frequent tumor types were Odontoma, (50.9%), Ameloblastoma (18.3%) and Myxoma (8.5%), and the most infrequent was Calcifying Epithelial Odontogenic Tumor (1.3%). According to our results, OT cannot be considered infrequent. They are the prevalent tumors of the jaws in the age group studied herein.