Oral Cancer - Just an Old Man's Disease?

Oral Cancer and Women:

(CNN) -- Pat Folsom, 54, knows the importance of preventive medicine. As a health care worker, she goes for scheduled checkups. So when she went in for a routine dental exam last year, she didn't expect more than a cleaning, maybe a filling. But her dentist found something more serious.

"She told me I had a lesion on my cheek and that it needed to be checked," Folsom said. "After a lot of tests, they found it was oral cancer."

Folsom was surprised. "I thought surely this was a mistake. I never smoked, I never drank heavily, and I never had a family history of this. How could this be?" she asked.

About 34,000 new U.S. cases of oral cancer are diagnosed each year, and the numbers are rising, according to the Oral Cancer Foundation. Although oral cancer has primarily been a man's illness, affecting six men for every woman, the foundation says that over the past 10 years, that ratio has become two men to each woman.

April is Oral Cancer Awareness month. Please share this important message with your loved ones and friends.

Oral Cancer Early & Advanced Indicators

Early Indicators:

Red and/or white discolorations of the soft tissues of the mouth.
Any sore which does not heal within 14 days.
Hoarseness which lasts for a prolonged period of time.

Advanced Indicators:

A sensation that something is stuck in your throat.
Numbness in the oral region.
Difficulty in moving the jaw or tongue.
Difficulty in swallowing.
Ear pain which occurs on one side only.
A sore under a denture, which even after adjustment of the denture, still does not heal.
A lump or thickening which develops in the mouth or on the neck.

Source: www.oralcancer.org

April is Oral Cancer Awareness month. Please share this important message with your loved ones and friends.

Oral Cancer Risk Factors

What are the risk factors?

There are two distinct pathways by which most people come to oral cancer. One is through the use of tobacco and alcohol, a long term historic problem and cause, and the other is through exposure to the HPV16 virus (human papilloma virus version 16), which is now the leading cause of oral cancers in the US, and the same one, which is responsible for the vast majority of cervical cancers in women. The quickest growing segment of the oral cancer population are young, healthy, non-smokers due to the connection to this virus. 

Source: www.oralcancer.org

April is Oral Cancer Awareness month. Please share this important message with your loved ones and friends.

Oral Cancer - Who Should Get Screened?

Who Needs to be Screened?

Every adult. Oral cancer can often be caught early, even as a pre-cancer. With early detection, survival rates are high and the side effects are from treatment are at their lowest. Like other screenings you engage in such as cervical, skin, prostate, colon and breast examinations, oral cancer screenings are an effective means of finding cancer at its early, highly curable stages. Make them part of your annual health check-ups.

Source: www.oralcancer.org

April is Oral Cancer Awareness month. Please share this important message with your loved ones and friends.