Angular cheilitis, also known as perlèche, is an acute or chronic inflammation of the skin and contiguous labial mucosa located at the lateral commissures of the mouth.
It typically starts with just redness, eventually some scaling, and fissuring at the corners of the mouth. Even some maceration is possible. Lesions are most often bilateral and may be painful.
Angular cheilitis may occur at any age without sex predilection, but is especially common in older individuals wearing dentures. Predisposing local factors include: wearing orthodontic appliances or ill-fitting dentures; sicca symptoms (dry mouth); intraoral fungal infection; poor oral hygiene; and age-related anatomic changes of the mouth.
In older individuals, the loss of vertical dimension of the mouth due to recession of the alveolar ridges or edentulous state leads to drooping of the corners of the mouth, drooling, and retention of saliva in the creases.
Conditions that probably are not your issue such as drooling, thumb sucking, and lip licking are frequent causes of angular cheilitis in young children.
Less frequent causes in both adults and children include nutritional deficiencies, type 2 diabetes, immunodeficiency, irritant or allergic reactions to oral hygiene products or denture materials, and medications causing dryness and and other skin conditions.
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Fixing it means figuring out which of those conditions you can improve.
●Improving denture fit and cleaning
●Maintaining optimal oral hygiene
●Treating sicca symptoms (dry mouth)
●Use of barrier creams (eg, zinc oxide paste) or petrolatum, and medications only if prescribed by a health care provider
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