Fig. 1

Incidence and clinical presentation of oral mucositis during chemotherapy and correlation with antineoplastics. a Intraoral images of a patient affected by oral mucositis. b Mucositis incidence according to the WHO scale, which evaluates in a categorical scale of 0 to 4 objective signs and patient-reported symptoms, and to the OMAS scale, which is based solely on objective signs of erythema and ulceration. OMAS scores reported here could range from 0 to 45 and represent the aggregated scores from nine intra-oral sites evaluated. c, d The clinical progression of mucositis in mucositis-positive subjects (n = 32 for the WHO scale and n = 37 for OMAS). Graphs show individual data points with median and range. ** indicates a p value < 0.01 and *** indicates a p value < 0.001 when comparing each time point to baseline via Wilcoxon matched-pairs signed rank tests. e Incidence of mucositis in subjects taking 5-FU and those on doxorubicin. * indicates a p value of < 0.05 when comparing incidence via chi-square. f Correlations between chemotherapeutic total drug doses and mucositis severity. Data represent Spearman correlation coefficients with p values in parenthesis. Colored cells show correlations significant after adjustment for multiple comparisons via the FDR method. Only drugs given to at least 15% of subjects were included in the analysis