According to the CDA, oral cancer occurs in 12 out of every 100,00 persons. Most people, who take their oral health seriously and visit dental clinics regularly to receive dental care, have a good chance of oral cancer detection at an early stage. When detected early, it has an 80 percent five-year survival rate, whereas the overall five-year survival rate of oral cancer is only 59 percent.
A dental clinic is the first line of defence against oral cancer, as when you go for a screening of the disease conducted by a dentist near you, they look for cancer growths or any other changes you might be experiencing in your mouth. This screening can be conducted either through visual examinations or with the help of screening tools such as Velscope and Vizilite. Let us delve deeper into oral cancer screening methods and their importance.
Incidence Of Oral Cancer
According to the data collected by the CDA, a general dental practitioner will come across a case of oral cancer once every 7-10 years and will lose a patient to oral cancer once every 20-30 years. Unfortunately, the survival rates of oral cancer have not improved much in the last 30 years. As mentioned earlier, early detection of the disease plays an important role in bringing these numbers down. Oral cancer that has progressed into advanced stages without being treated, has a substantially lower five-year survival rate.
Causes And Signs Of Oral Cancer
For a long time, excessive consumption of alcohol, UV exposure, and the use of tobacco, have been regarded as the main causes of oral cancer. However, more recently, HPV163 has been recognized as a more challenging form of oral cancer as it is the most difficult to identify. It tends to occur at the back of the mouth and mostly in younger people, unlike the traditional age-range for other forms of oral cancer. Also, recently the gender ratio or oral cancer incidence has evened out due to the rise of smoking among women. However, men continue to be twice as likely to get oral cancer compared to women.
Oral cancer is quite challenging to diagnose in the early stages as there are very few physical symptoms. Some common symptoms are:
● Mouth ulcers that have yet to healover the period of a few weeks.
● Lingering lumps in the mouth or throat.
● Changes in your mouth, like numbness on the tongue or lips.
● White or red patches inside your mouth or on your tongue.
● Unexplained loosening teeth.
The best way to defend yourself against the possibility of mouth cancer is to visit a dental clinic providing Velscope screening near you at the earliest sign of any symptom. Regular dental check-ups also help to a large extent, because during a dental exam a dentist gets an opportunity to detect any early signs of oral cancer, even if you haven’t experienced them yet. If your dentist in Okotoks feels the need, they might suggest that you undergo a visual or Velscope screening for oral cancer to rule out any possibilities.
Need For Velscope Screening At Dental Clinics
According to data, the number of oral cancer screenings conducted every month at dental clinics is less than 10 percent of the total number of patient visits. This number needs to go up drastically to prevent more people from losing out on their survival chances from oral cancer only due to the failure in early detection of the condition. Considering that dentists are the first in line in our defence from oral cancer, it seems logical to have more dental clinics equipped with oral cancer screenings. A dentist offering Velscope screening in Okotoks needs only a few minutes of your time to complete the procedure for screening, but undergoing this will drastically reduce your chances of suffering from late detection of oral cancer.