Oral Cancer Prevention

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Oral Cancer Prevention

• Dr shabeel pn

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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

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

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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

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• 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

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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

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• tobacco

• Alcohol

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• 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

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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)

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Prevention

• Two parts
• Primary prevention
• Secondary prevention

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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)

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• 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)

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• 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)

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• Smoking

• Using of sunscreen

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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

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• 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

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• 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
  patients routine check-up.
• Also another important factor is patients
  compliance and the dentist compliance to follow
  up known cases when detected

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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

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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 15132-144

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• Speight et al. The cost effectiveness of
  screening for oral cancer in primary care. Health
  Technol Assess 200610i-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
  15331-334