Oral Cancer Prevention Dr shabeel pn

What is oral cancer? This is cancer that occurs in the oral cavity and part of the throat at the back of the mouth. This includes: Lips Hard and soft palate & uvula Salivary glands Tongue Oropharynx Floor of the mouth

Most oral cancer begins in the floor of the mouth and tongue Can spread to other parts of the body

What is cancer? Normally cells they divide to form new cells and they grow, when they get old they die and new cells replace them. When these processes does not happen the way they suppose to be happening then extra cells will be form and they will form a mass, and this is call cancer

The cause of oral cancer is not fully understood but it has shown that people developing oral cancer, they have been exposed to certain risk factors

Risk factors Tobacco this includes smoking and chewing of tobacco. The risk is even higher for people that and drink alcohol at the same time. Alcohol this is also another risk factor for oral cancer the more alcohol you consume the more are the chances of getting oral cancer. But also even higher if also smoke

tobacco Alcohol

Sun cancer of the lips is caused by sun exposure History of any head and neck cancer people with history of having head and neck cancer are more at risk than those that does not have a history of this

Burden of the disease According to the statistics from the Office for national Statistics, 1998 it shows that there is more than 3,000 new cases every year in the United Kingdom and 60% of these patients will die from this. (Office for National statistics, 1998)

Prevention Two parts Primary prevention Secondary prevention

Primary prevention This focuses on the prevention of these risk factors Since we all know about these risk factors, then preventing it can cause a decreased in the number of new cases in every year A study that was done in Sri Lanka in 1984 suggested that using primary health care workers to educate the adults might be five times more cost effective than providing high tech. treatment (Cancer Research Campaign, 1993)

So it is important to educate people about oral cancer and its risk factors Here we target young children when they are still growing up by educating them not to smoke and drink alcohol and not to follow the bad habits of taking them Also when advising them about this we should also tell them how these factors contribute to oral cancer A study was done and it found no evidence of any beneficial effects from mass media programmes (Kay and Locker, 1998)

So they came up with the idea that giving a chair-side oral health promotion advise was more effective So in order for people to avoid these risk factors it is very important that their knowledge about oral cancer is enough in order for them to change their lifestyle But there was a research that was done and it suggests that the current levels of public awareness about oral cancer are disappointingly low (Bhatti et al, 1995; Warnakulasuriya et al,1999)

Smoking Using of sunscreen

Secondary prevention This focus more on the early detection of the cancer before it reaches the stage where no help can be done So early detection can help in the improvement of the quality of treatment and the prognosis of the cancer This includes oral cancer screening There are three types of screening programmes that have been used in recent years

Invitational programmes where people on some official list are contacted Opportunistic programmes where individuals attending a dental or medical practice for a reasons unrelated to oral cancer are invited to have a mucosal examination Case finding programmes where house to house calls are made in order to contact and examine eligible residents in a specific locality

A study was done and it shows that opportunistic screening for oral cancer and pre-cancer in general dental and medical practices of patients aged 30-40yrs is likely to be the most effective screening strategy. (Speight et al, 1995; 2006) This was because many dental practitioners they use oral mucosal examination as part of the patient’s routine check-up. Also another important factor is patient’s compliance and the dentist compliance to follow up known cases when detected

Conclusion Oral cancer can be prevented through public health promotion in educating them about oral cancer and that they fully understand it. Screening plays an important role in preventing oral cancer If oral cancer can be detected in an early stage than the chances of healing and improvement is high

reference Bhatti et al. Public Knowledge and attitudes on oral cancer: a pilot investigation. J Inst Health Educ 1995; 32: 112-117 Cancer Research Campaign. Oral Cancer Factsheets 14.1- 14.5. London: CRC, 1993 Kay E, Locker D. A systematic review of the effectiveness of health promotion aimed at improving oral health. Community Dent Health 1998; 15:132-144

Speight et al. The cost effectiveness of screening for oral cancer in primary care. Health Technol Assess 2006;10:i-x,1-144 www.cancernet.nci.nih.gov/pdf/WYNTK/WTNTK_oral.pdf Warnakulasuriya et al. An alarming lack of public awareness towards oral cancer. Br Dent J 1999; 15:331-334