The Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Pathology was established in March 1970 by Dr. Young Pill Cho. Successive chairpersons of the department have included Dr. Han Kook Cho, Dr. Jaeo Cho, Dr. Eun Chull Kim, and Dr. Sang Wook Kang, who held the position until 2021. The tasks of the Department of Oral Pathology include conducting lectures and laboratory work for undergraduate dental students, as well as for graduate students pursuing MSD and PhD degrees. The department also engages in research within the field of oral pathology and provides diagnostic services for tissues obtained from diseases affecting the oral and maxillofacial regions. The objectives of the department are to equip students with the appropriate knowledge and skills to diagnose and develop accurate treatment plans for diseases affecting oral and maxillofacial structures through lectures and laboratory work after graduation. Since the establishment of the Master's and PhD programs in Oral and Maxillofacial Pathology, a total of 94 individuals have completed the Master's program, 45 individuals have completed the PhD program, and 1 individual has completed the Master-PhD collaboration program. Each participant completed their respective courses and obtained the appropriate degrees following the evaluation of their graduation theses.

The maxillofacial region is susceptible to damage because facial bone is prominent. The aim of this study is to evaluate the incidence, etiology, seasonal distribution, and patterns of maxillofacial injuries and investigate the percentage of bone fractures on CT scans by patient’s gender and age. Electronic medical records of 1,483 patients who had maxillofacial injuries and visited the Emergency Medical Center of Chonnam National Hospital were evaluated. Age, gender, etiology, seasonal occurrence, frequency of fracture, and the pattern of bone fracture were analyzed by using IBM SPSS Statistics 21 (SPSS Inc., Chicago, IL, USA). Male to female ratio was 2.82:1. The most common causes of injury were falls or collisions (male 40.09%, female 48.2%), followed by traffic accidents and violence. The number of injuries related to sporting accidents, assult, and industrial accidents was higher in male patients than that of female patients. With regard to the seasonal occurrence, 434 cases (29.26%) occurred in the summer, while 306 cases (20.63%) occurred in the winter. In this study, 946 patients (63.79%) were identified to have facture and 537 patients (36.21%) were found to be without fracture on CT scans. The orbital bone (41.38%) was the most commonly fractured in the mid facial structures. The most common fracture site in the mandible was the body of the mandible (23.13%). The patterns of maxillofacial injuries were various based on gender, age, cause of injury, and season.

The purpose of this study was to examine the state of the articles in the Korean Journal of Oral and Maxillofacial Pathology and overall research trends in this field in an effort to grasp the reality of the Journal and suggest some of the right directions for the development of research in this field. 332 articles that were printed in the Korean Journal of Oral and Maxillofacial Pathology over the past decade (2003-2012) were selected for the purpose of analysis. As a result of analysing the 332 articles in 52 issues of the Journal, it's found that a mean of 6.3 articles were contained in each issue. As for the form of article, original articles was more common than case reports, which were respectively used in 275 articles (82.8%) and 57 articles (17.2%). Concerning research methods by year, cell culture was most prevailing (124 articles, 37.3%), followed by clinicopathologic study (68, 20.5%), case report (62, 18.8%), animal experiments (28, 8.4%), clinical trial study (28, 8.4%) and others (22, 6.6%). As to the number of researchers, the majority of the articles were written by two or more researchers. The most common number of researchers was three (66 articles, 19.9%), and the number of the articles written by two (49, 14.8%) was similar to that of the articles written by four (47, 14.2%). 38 articles (11.4%) were written by eight researchers or more. Regarding the language of the articles, Korean was used in 213 articles (64.2%), and English was used in 119 articles (35.8%). As for the number of references, this number ranged from a low of zero(in the articles related to the history of pathology) to a high of 71, and the average number of references was 27.91. In relation to the themes of research, the largest number of the articles (47, 32.6%) dealt with oral squamous cell carcinoma, followed by diseases related to odontogenic carcinoma (21, 14.5%), diseases related to odontogenic cyst (17, 11.7%), salivary gland tumor (seven, 4.8%) and granuloma (five, 3.5%). The efforts by this study to explore the shifts of articles and recent research trends are expected to provide useful information on how to accelerate the identity building of this journal and the development of research in oral and maxillofacial pathology.

Recently, oteomyelitis from oral and maxillofacial region which is an acute or chronic inflammatory process in medullary spaces or cortical surfaces of bone is uncommon in Korea. And the clinicopatholgic study of osteomyelitis in Korea has been rarely reported. The purpose of this study were to examine the clinicopatholgic analysis of osteomyelitis patients and to apply its results for treatment. Retrospective analysis of 103 cases of osteomyelitis patients treated in the Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery at DKUDH from 1991 to 2000. There was a male predominance with a 2.3:1 ratio. The mean age of onset of disease was almost the same in cases of acute and chronic osteomyelitis: 29.4 years(range 1-81 years). Swelling, pain, pus discharge, and sequestration were main characteristic features of this disease entity. Acute chronic osteomyelitis of the jaws is caused mostly by a bacterial focus(odontogenic disease, periapical lesion, pericoronitis, periodontal disease, postextraction wounds, and infected fractures). It suggested that acute and chronic osteomyelitis could be basically the same disease separated by the arbitrary time limit of 1 month after onset of the disease by a true bacterial infection. And these results could play an role in the diagnosis and treatment of osteomyelitis of the jaws

Langerhans cell histiocytosis (LCH) is a rare clinicopathologic disorder characterized by proliferation of histiocyte- like cells (langerhans cell histiocytes) accompanied by varying other inflammatory cells. LCH commonly involves the oral and maxillofacial region, but is very rarely seen. Then LCH has made it difficult to investigate the clinical and histological aspects. We investigated LCH of oral and maxillofacial region and analyzed clinical and histological characteristics. We reviewed the records of all patients who were diagnosed as LCH, retrospectively. Data included patient’s age, sex, chief complaint, clinical diagnoses, radiologic and histologic reports, and clinical course. We analyzed clinical and histological characteristics. From 2000 to 2007, 8 patients were diagnosed as LCH. 7 were children and 1 was adult. All cases involved mandible. Clinical type of all cases were“eosinophilic granuloma”. 6 cases were classified as“unifocal disease”and 2 cases were“multifocal single system diseases”. Microscopic findings commonly showed numerous histiocytes with eosinophilic cytoplasm (langerhans histiocytes). In 6 cases, immunohistochemical study was accomplished and confirmed the diagnosis of LCH. 6 cases were cured and not recurred, and 2 cases had loss of follow- up. Unifocal disease type of LCH may arise in Korean people more frequently than in western people (75% Vs 49%). Therefore, the higher frequency of unifocal disease of LCH is expected to raise the cure rate and to improve patient prognosis in Korean patients with LCH.

Numerous bone cell culture models have been presented by the development of isolation and culturing techniques of cells. The culture of osteoblast-like cells of human origin with a specific osteoblastic phenotype has become an important experimental model in bone biology. Recently, it has become increasingly popular to utilize bone marrow cultures because these cultures are therefore thought to represent earlier stages of the osteoblast differentiation pathway. There is no report about culturing normal human osteoblast from oral and maxillofacial area. Primary cultured cells from oral and maxillofacial cancellous bone were analyzed by morphologic features, total DNA contents, ALP, osteocalcin and von Kossa staining positivity. The purpose of this study were to culture the cell population from oral and maxillofacial cancellous bone and to analyze the phenotypic expression of cultured normal human osteoblast by the bone marrow isolation technique. Growth curve of NHost showed about 45hrs of doubling time and about 70μ g/well of total DNA content. NHost showed spindle shaped cytoplasm with ovoid nucleus under preconfluency and after cellular differentiation, they formed irregular numerous nodules from stratified cellular layers under D medium. ALP activity was about 2 folds higher under control medium with 10nM 1,25(OH)2D3 than that under control medium. Osteocalcin expression was about seven folds higher under control medium with 100nM 1,25(OH)2D3 than that under control medium. Scattered mineralized nodules stained by von Kossa method were seen on the cellular layer under D medium. It suggested that NHost might be established from oral and maxillofacial area by characteristic cellular shape, ALP activity, osteocalcin expression and numerous mineralized nodules.