What You Should Know About Oral Cancer Screening Oregon

By Karina Frost


Oral cancer is also known as mouth cancer. It can arise as a simple lesion in the tissues of your mouth. It can also spread by metastasis from a different part of the body. If you are worried that this may affect you or someone close to you, you may want to research oral cancer screening oregon.

This disease is actually a problem around the world. In many Asian countries, chewing betel or paan is considered to be a risk factor for the disease. In India, this disease accounts for forty percent of all reported cancers. This is significant compared to just four percent of reported cases in the UK.

The disease often manifests as a non-healing sore or ulcer. This basically means an ulcer that is showing no signs of healing after about two weeks. In the US, this disease accounts for nearly eight percent of all malignant cancers. Men tend to be affected twice as often as women do, especially men that are older than sixty.

A premalignant lesion is normally benign. It is altered tissue that has the potential of becoming malignant over time. There are various types of these premalignant lesions that can occur in your mouth. Many of these lesions begin as red or white patches in the mouth. Some common lesions that may be premalignant are lichen planus of the mouth, actinic cheilitis and submucous fibrosis.

It is a good idea to have this screening test done at least once a year. If there is anything suspicious, the doctor will order special tests, such as an x-ray, a CT scan or an MRI. The doctor may also take a tissue biopsy for further testing. This testing will normally be done in a lab.

There are many screening devices that doctors and dentists may use to detect oral cancer. Some of these devices include the Velscope, the identafi 3000 or the Vizilite Plus. Doctors need to be careful that these devices do not harm the patient through over use, or produce false positives that may lead to unnecessary biopsies.

A brush biopsy is non-invasive and can be used to rule out any dysplasia in areas of the mouth with unexplained discoloration or lesions. However, the only sure method of determining if a lesion is cancerous or not is through a biopsy and a microscopic evaluation of the cells in the tissue sample.

You should understand that nearly seventy-five percent of these cancers are associated with certain behaviors that can be modified over time, such as smoking tobacco and too much alcohol consumption. Other factors such as poor oral hygiene and irritation to the gums caused by badly fitted dentures are also contributors. Having poor nutrition and chronic infections from bacteria or viruses are also red flags. However, if oral cancer is diagnosed at an early stage, medical treatment will generally be effective with the disease.




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