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. 2022 Oct;74(Suppl 2):3235-3238.
doi: 10.1007/s12070-021-03052-3. Epub 2022 Jan 6.

Pathophysiology and Management of Tongue Involvement in COVID-19 Patients

Zeinab Mohseni Afshar  1 , Mohammad Barary  2   3 , Soheil Ebrahimpour  4 , Alireza Janbakhsh  1 , Mandana Afsharian  1 , Amirhossein Hasanpour  2 , Arefeh Babazadeh  4
Affiliations

Pathophysiology and Management of Tongue Involvement in COVID-19 Patients

Zeinab Mohseni Afshar et al. Indian J Otolaryngol Head Neck Surg. 2022 Oct.

Abstract

Evaluate the lingual manifestations of COVID-19, and provide a clinical guide in managing these symptoms. Electronic databases, such as PubMed/Medline, and Scopus were searched until November 1, 2020, and only randomized controlled trials, cross-sectional and cohort studies, as well as case reports and series, and review articles in English were considered. A total of 40 studies were included in this study. Lingual involvement has been extensively reported in patients with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). The most common features of lingual involvements were red or light red, yellow coating, and greasy coating tongue, though other complications, such as pale, purple, white coating, grayish-black coating, rough, tender, puffy, spotty, prickles, fissured, and tooth-marked tongue was also reported. Poor oral hygiene, opportunistic infections (OIs), medications, and hyper-inflammatory response to infection are the most common predisposing factors for the onset of oral lesions in patients with COVID-19. In conclusion, the current review described the lingual manifestations of COVID-19, and as oral complaints are relatively common in COVID-19 patients, an intraoral examination should be conducted in all suspected cases of SARS-CoV-2 infection.

Keywords: COVID-19; Clinical manifestation; SARS-CoV-2; Tongue.

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Conflict of interest statement

Conflict of InterestAll authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
a A summary of the extrapulmonary manifestations of COVID-19, b Erythemeatous tongue with deep grooves in a patient with COVID-19
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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