Screening For Oral Cancer

By Deepa Suryanarayanan, DMD

Smiles of North Bethesda & Smiles of Hyattsville

. http://www.dentistdeepa.com

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Screening For Oral Cancer

The next time you visit your dentist, ask about your oral cancer screening – most people receive one during their regular dental checkup but do not realize it. The dentist checks about 10 places inside and around the mouth, looking for lumps or irregular tissue changes.

Every year, 35,000 Americans are diagnosed with oral cancer, which accounts for roughly 7,500 deaths each year. If detected early, oral cancer can be cured. That is why many dentists make this a part of their routine dental examination for their patients.

Often, patients don’t realize the exam is being conducted because it is a quick, comfortable addition to the patient’s regular dental checkup.

Oral cancer is typically painless in its early stages and often goes unnoticed by the patient until it spreads, leading to chronic pain and sometimes loss of function before it is diagnosed. In its later stages, oral cancer can lead to surgery and facial and oral disfigurement. Surgery can include removal of a portion of the tongue and jaw.

The human papillomavirus (HPV) is the most common sexually transmitted infection in the United States – approximately 20 million Americans currently are infected. There are more than 100 strains of HPV, and more than 40 of them are capable of infecting the mouth and throat. Ten years ago, 40% of oral cancer biopsies were HPV-positive; today, that figure is closer to an astounding 80%.

HPV is so common that at least half of sexually active males and females will contract it at some point in their lives. In 90% of the cases, the body’s immune system clears HPV within two years; however, while the majority of HPV infections do not lead to oral cancers, there’s no escaping the fact that some of them do.

While the incidence of oral cancers among Americans in general has decreased, probably due to reduced tobacco use, certain kinds of oral and oropharyngeal cancer have increased, especially in younger populations. We are seeing more and more people who have never smoked or taken a drink in their lives and are astonished to learn that they’ve developed oral cancer from HPV.

It’s imperative that all sexually active females see their general dentist to be screened for oral cancer on a regular basis. Your OB-GYN doesn’t look in your mouth to check for sexually transmitted diseases or oral cancer. Only your dentist is doing that for you.

In addition to an HPV-related infection, other risk factors for developing oral cancer include tobacco or alcohol use, age, gender (oral cancer strikes men twice as often as it does women), and race (oral cancer occurs more frequently in African Americans than it does in Caucasians). Oral cancer is the eighth most common cancer among men and the 14th most common cancer among women.

Although HPV’s mode of transmission to the oral cavity is less understood and less defined at this time, researchers believe that changing behaviors in tobacco and alcohol use and sexual practices in the United States may indicate that specific mechanisms are responsible for the origination of cancers at particular locations in the body.

Information obtained from the AGD.