Arnold H. Rosenheck, DMD, DPL, ABOMS, Assistant Dean/Associate Professor, Dept. OMFS, UMDNJ-N.J. Dental School, 110 Bergen Street, Newark, NJ 07101-1709, 973-972-3620, rosenhec@umdnj.edu

A Role for Health Care Professionals in the fight against Oral Cancer

In the past forty years one cancer has persistently maintained a poor five-year survival rate. The risk factors for oral cancer are well known and our treatment modalities have advanced, then why hasn’t the survival rate improved in the last few decades? One issue is that most of these cancers are diagnosed as advanced, late stage disease. There is a racial and ethnic disparity in incidence, mortality and five year survival rate. Tongue cancers have increased recently among younger people below 40 years of age. Oral cancer incidence among women has increased from 15% of all patients with oral cancer to a full 1/3 of oral cancer over the past 45 years. If the public is made aware of the need for a thorough oral cancer examination by their health care provider at least once or twice a year then we will have a shot at revising these sinister trends. The second part of the equation is giving providers the knowledge of oral cancer statistics, training these health care professionals in the ability to perform a comprehensive oral cancer examination, and finally teaching these providers the difference between oral diseases of local and systemic etiology, oral cancer and highly suspicious lesions, and the innocuous red and white spots that, if allowed to progress may become significant late stage disease. Only through this approach, this consciousness rising, we will be able to treat the Disease in its earliest stages and affect a cure.

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