April is Oral Cancer Awareness month. How can you prevent Oral Cancer?

What are the main risk factors for oral cancer?

According to the BC Cancer Agency, the risk of contracting oral cancer increases with age. Other risk factors include smoking or chewing tobacco, consuming more than three alcoholic drinks per day and exposure to ultra-violet light (sun damage). Any previous head or neck cancer also puts you at a greater risk.

There is also increasing speculation that human papilloma virus (HPV) may play a role in some cases of oral cancer via oral sex transmission. **Our dental office offers the OraRisk HPV diagnostic testing.**

Preventing oral cancer

Here's how you can take an active role in preventing oral cancer or detecting it in its early stages:

1. Always brush and floss your teeth regularly. An unhealthy mouth reduces your immune system and inhibits your body’s ability to fight off potential cancers.

2. Do not smoke (or chew) any type of tobacco product. If you are a smoker, even with a casual habit, make the decision to stop.

3. Drink alcohol in moderation (one to two drinks per day) and never binge drink. The risk of developing oral cancer increases with the amount and length of time alcohol and tobacco products are used.

4. Limit your exposure to the sun. We all know we need to use sunscreen, but do we remember to apply it to our lips? Always use UV-A/B-blocking sun protection on your lips when you are in the sun. Repeated exposure increases the risk of cancer on the lips, especially the lower lip. There are a lot of handy lipstick-size sunscreen tubes to pop in your purse for everyday use. Some even come with a color tint and flavor to replace your regular lip gloss or moisturizer. **Our dental office offers complimentary lip balm to our of our patients to keep your lips healthy and protected.**

5. Exercise regularly. An active lifestyle is known to boost the immune system and help ward off cancer.

6. Choose cancer-fighting foods in your diet. The American Institute for Cancer Research recommends you eat lots of beans, berries, cruciferous vegetables (like cabbage and broccoli), dark green leafy vegetables, flaxseed, garlic, grapes, green tea, soy and tomatoes for their role in cancer prevention. "Right now the effect of diets and nutrition in preventing cancer is hot," says Dr. Lewei Zhang, a professor of oral and biomedical sciences at the University of British Columbia.

7. How you prepare those foods is also important in the prevention of cancer. Replace frying and grilling with baking, boiling or steaming. Use healthy spices like garlic, ginger and curry powder for added flavor.

8. See your dentist or dental hygienist regularly (at least every six months) and ask for an oral cancer screening to be done. ** Our dental office offers VELScope Oral Cancer Screenings. **

Schedule your dental appointment. 

9. Conduct a self exam at least once a month. Plan to do it the same time you do your breast self-exam. It only takes a few minutes of your time, but could make a big difference in your life. Buy a handy mouth mirror (available at most pharmacies) for those hard-to-see areas. Be sure to check the back and sides of your tongue. If you see or feel anything suspicious – lumps, bumps, tender areas, white, red or grey patches, see your dentist to have it checked.

reference: Brian S. Nylaan, D.D.S.; Oral Cancer Foundation; BC Cancer Agency

Throat / Oral Cancer and HPV - what are the risks?

Michael Douglas - the star of Basic Instinct and Fatal Attraction – has revealed that his throat cancer was apparently caused by performing oral sex.

In a surprisingly frank interview with the Guardian, the actor explained the background to a condition that was thought to be nearly fatal when diagnosed three years ago. Asked whether he now regretted his years of smoking and drinking, usually thought to be the cause of the disease, Douglas replied: "No. Because without wanting to get too specific, this particular cancer is caused by HPV [human papillomavirus], which actually comes about from cunnilingus."

The actor, now 68, was diagnosed with cancer in August 2010, following many months of oral discomfort. But a series of specialists missed the tumor and instead prescribed antibiotics. Douglas then went to see a friend's doctor in Montreal who looked inside his mouth using a tongue depressor.

"I will always remember the look on his face," Douglas has previously said. "He said: 'We need a biopsy.' There was a walnut-size tumor at the base of my tongue that no other doctor had seen."

Shortly afterwards he was diagnosed with stage four cancer, which is often terminal, and embarked on an intensive eight-week course of chemotherapy and radiation. He refused to use a feeding tube, despite his palate being burnt on account of the treatment, and so lost 20kg (45lb) on a liquids-only diet. "That's a rough ride. That can really take it out of you," he told the Guardian. "Plus the amount of chemo I was getting, it zaps all the good stuff too. It made me very weak."

The treatment worked and Douglas is now more than two years clear of cancer. He has check-ups every six months, he said, "and with this kind of cancer, 95% of the time it doesn't come back".

HPV, the sexually transmitted virus best known as a cause of cervical and anal cancer and genital warts, is thought to be responsible for an increasing proportion of oral cancers.

Mahesh Kumar, a consultant head and neck surgeon in London, confirmed that the last decade has seen a dramatic rise in this form of cancer, particularly among younger sufferers. Recent studies of 1,316 patients with oral cancer found that 57% of them were HPV-16 positive.

"It has been established beyond reasonable doubt that the HPV type 16 is the causative agent in oropharyngeal cancer," said Kumar, who also testified to increased recovery rates among this kind of cancer sufferer. This would help explain why Douglas was given an 80% chance of survival, despite the advanced stage of his illness.

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Our dental office offers the OraRisk^® HPV Salivary Diagnostic Test and VELscope® Oral Cancer Screening


OraRisk^® HPV Salivary Diagnostic Test

Human papillomavirus (HPV) is one of the most common virus groups in the world. According to the Centers for Disease Control, at least 20 million people in the United States are infected with HPV and there are approximately 6 million new cases
each year.

Oral HPV is a manifestation of the HPV virus in the mouth, and is primarily found in the oropharyngeal complex. Specific types of oral HPV are now considered to be separate and serious risk factor for developing oral cancers. Early detection and identification of the presence or absence of oral HPV is important, as early oral HPV infections do not typically cause any clinical signs or symptoms.

The OraRisk^® HPV test is a non-invasive, easy-to-use screening tool to identify the type(s) of oral HPV, a mucosal viral infection that could potentially lead to oral cancer. OraRisk^® HPV enables the clinician to establish increased risk for oral cancer and determine appropriate referral and monitoring conditions.


VELscope® Oral Cancer Screening    

Oral cancer is often deemed the “forgotten disease,” because it kills more people than testicular cancer, cervical cancer and cancer of the brain each year and receives little publicity in return.  Each year, over 30,000 Americans contract oral cancer, and only 57% of these people will live for more than five years without treatment.

 

Many people believe that if they abstain from tobacco and alcohol use, oral cancer will not affect them.  Tobacco and alcohol use does contribute to oral cancer; however, 25% of those diagnosed abstain from both substances.

 

The best way to stay protected from oral cancer is to get annual oral cancer screenings.  Most dentists perform an oral cancer exam during a regular dental checkup.  The FDA-approved VELscope^® offers dentists another examination tool to help detect oral cancer in its earliest stages.  The VELscope^® is a blue excitation lamp, which highlights precancerous and cancerous cell changes.

Request an appointment for your OraRisk^® HPV Salivary Diagnostic Test or VELscope® Oral Cancer Screening today!

 

 references: Boston Globe; Oral Cancer Foundation; Oral DNA labs,

It is predicted that by 2020 HPV will cause more ORAL cancer than Cervical Cancer. OraRisk testing is available and recommended.

WASHINGTON — A prolonged sore throat once was considered a cancer worry mainly for smokers and drinkers. Today there's another risk: A sexually transmitted virus is fueling a rise in oral cancer.
The HPV virus is best known for causing cervical cancer. But it can cause cancer in the upper throat, too, and a new study says HPV-positive tumors now account for a majority of these cases of what is called oropharyngeal cancer.

If that trend continues, that type of oral cancer will become the nation's main HPV-related cancer within the decade, surpassing cervical cancer, researchers from Ohio State University and the National Cancer Institute report Monday.

"There is an urgency to try to figure out how to prevent this," says Dr. Amy Chen of the American Cancer Society and Emory University, who wasn't part of the new research.
While women sometimes get oral cancer caused by the HPV, the risk is greatest and rising among men, researchers reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology. No one knows why, but it begs the question of whether the vaccine given to girls and young women to protect against cervical cancer also might protect against oral HPV.

HPV vaccination is approved for boys to prevent genital warts and anal cancer, additional problems caused by human papillomavirus. But protection against oral HPV hasn't been studied in either gender, says Dr. Maura Gillison, a head-and-neck cancer specialist at Ohio State and senior author of the new research. That's important, because it's possible to have HPV in one part of the body but not the other, she says. A spokeswoman for Merck & Co., maker of the HPV vaccine Gardasil, said the company has no plans for an oral cancer study.

Monday's research was funded by the NCI and Ohio State. Gillison has been a consultant to Merck.
There are nearly 10,000 new cases of oropharyngeal cancer a year, and overall incidence has risen by 28 percent since 1988 even as other types of head-and-neck cancer have been declining.

Tobacco and alcohol have long been the main causes of these tumors, which occur in the tonsils, base of the tongue and upper throat. But over the past few years, studies have shown HPV is playing a role in that rise, probably due to an increase in oral sex even as tobacco use was dropping.

The new study took a closer look, tracking HPV over time by directly testing tumor tissue from 271 patients that had been stored in cancer registries in Hawaii, Iowa and Los Angeles. The proportion that were HPV-positive rose from just 16 percent in the late 1980s to nearly 73 percent by the early 2000s.
Translate that to the overall population, and the researchers concluded that incidence rates of the HPV-positive tumors more than tripled while HPV-negative tumors dropped by half.

Oral cancer has always been a bigger threat to men than women. Gillison says women account for only about 1 in 4 cases, and their incidence is holding steady while men's is rising. That raises questions about gender differences in sexual behavior or whether oral HPV infection is likely to linger longer in men.

While HPV is the most common sexually transmitted infection, studies show women's bodies usually clear the virus from the cervix quickly; only an infection that persists for years is a cancer risk. It's not known if oral HPV acts similarly or even is as common.

Nor is it clear if oral sex is the only way it's transmitted, cautions Dr. Gregory Masters of the American Society for Clinical Oncology, an oncologist at Delaware's Helen Graham Cancer Center.
Regardless, just over 11,000 cases of cervical cancer will be diagnosed this year, a number that has been dropping steadily thanks to better Pap smears. (It's too soon to know what difference vaccination will make.) Gillison's team calculated that annual cases of cervical cancer will drop to 7,700 by 2020 – compared with about 8,700 cases of HPV-positive oropharyngeal cancer by then, about 7,400 of them in men.

The cancer society's Chen urged caution about those numbers, saying more data is needed. But she says two things are clear: First, patients with HPV-linked oral tumors have better survival odds than those with other types of this cancer, possibly because they tend to be younger. Studies are beginning to test if they can scale back today's treatment and thus suffer fewer long-term side effects such as problems with speech and swallowing.

And "just because you're not a smoker or drinker doesn't mean you can't get throat cancer," Chen says – so get checked for symptoms like a throat that's sore for longer than two weeks.

~ Lauran Neergaard - Huffington Post

Our office offers The OraRisk^® HPV Salivary Diagnostic Test

Human papillomavirus (HPV) is one of the most common virus groups in the world. According to the Centers for Disease Control, at least 20 million people in the United States are infected with HPV and there are approximately 6 million new cases each year.

Oral HPV is a manifestation of the HPV virus in the mouth, and is primarily found in the oropharyngeal complex. Specific types of oral HPV are now considered to be separate and serious risk factor for developing oral cancers. Early detection and identification of the presence or absence of oral HPV is important, as early oral HPV infections do not typically cause any clinical signs or symptoms.
The OraRisk^® HPV test is a non-invasive, easy-to-use screening tool to identify the type(s) of oral HPV, a mucosal viral infection that could potentially lead to oral cancer. OraRisk^® HPV enables the clinician to establish increased risk for oral cancer and determine appropriate referral and monitoring conditions.

Who should be tested?

• Patients with traditional risk factors for oral cancer
• Patients who are sexually active
• Patients with signs and symptoms of oral cancer
• Patients with suspicious oral lesions

Schedule an appointment for your OraRisk^® HPV Salivary Diagnostic Test