The influence of cigarette smoke on the pharyngeal mucosa.

The influence of cigarette smoke on the pharyngeal mucosa was investigated in a clinical study and in an experiment on animals. Histologic reports were evaluated according to the Kambic-Lenart classification of hyperplastic aberrations of the throat mucosa. A close dependence of the degree of hyperplasia and the number of cigarettes smoked was revealed. The more cigarettes the patients smoked every day, the more evident were changes on the mucosa, more clearly manifested in male than in female smokers. It was observed that the changes related to the hyperplasia atypica were more evident the longer the patients smoked. They were also more intense the younger the smokers were when they started smoking. In the experiment on animals, a number of factors with additionally noxious influence on the pharyngeal mucosa were excluded. A great interdependence was observed between the number of daily inhaled cigaretes and the changes on the pharyngeal mucosa.