Oral cancer screening

Screening is looking for cancer before a person has any symptoms which helps find cancer at an early, curable stage. By the time symptoms appear, cancer may have begun to spread, which makes it more difficult to treat.

Oral cancers appear most often on the tongue, lip, and floor of the mouth. However, any oral changes not resolving within a two week period on their own, with or without treatment, should be considered suspect and worthy of further examination.

Historically, 75% of oral cancers were related to alcohol and tobacco use, and occurred most often in men over the age of 60. Currently, young, non smoking patients are the fastest growing segment of oral cancer population. For this reason, it is recommended that all patients should be routinely examined for oral cancer.

In order to add to the thoroughness of the procedure, AG dentistry introduced Microlux DL fiber-optic light and specially formulated rinse to enhance visibility of oral changes. If a screening test result is abnormal, more tests need to be done to find out if you have cancer.

In Canada, oral cancer is the 13th most common cancer (out of the 23 reported cancers). Oral cancer new cases and deaths are relatively low in number compared to prostate, breast and colorectal cancer, but are almost 3 times higher than for cervical cancer and almost double than liver cancer. The 5 year survival rate for oral cancer is only 63%.