Glossitis be an indication of an underlying serious medical condition and nearly always merits assessment by a physician or dental surgeon. Glossitis could be classified as a group of tongue diseases or gastrointestinal diseases. It may be primary, where there is no underlying cause, or secondary where it is a sign or symptom of another condition. It can be acute or chronic. Generally speaking, there are several clinical patterns of glossitis, some more common than others. Atrophic glossitis, also known as bald tongue, smooth tongue, Hunter glossitis, Moeller glossitis, or Möller-Hunter glossitis, is a condition characterized by a smooth glossy tongue
Inflammation and the reaction of the body's inflammatory response — the two components are considered together when discussing an infection, and the word is used to imply a microbial invasive cause for the observed inflammatory reaction. Inflammation on the other hand describes purely the body's immunovascular response, whatever the cause may be. But because of how often the two are correlated, words ending in the suffix "-itis" (which refers to inflammation) are sometimes informally described as referring to infection. For example, the word "urethritis" strictly means only "urethral inflammation", but clinical health care providers usually discuss urethritis as a urethral infection