Oral cancer is one of the cancers whose survival rates have not materially improved in recent years. This form of cancer kills a person in North America every hour of every day. Over 34,000 Americans are diagnosed with oral cancer every year. Oral cancer's 5-year survival rate is about 52 %, less than more commonly discussed cancers, like cervical cancer, breast cancer, Hodgkin's lymphoma, and testicular cancer. However, the survival rate for oral cancer can be increased to approximately 80 % if the cancer is detected early.

A Lesson from Cervical Cancer

Cervical cancer used to be one of the most deadly forms of cancer. In fact, its 5-year survival rate during the 1950s was roughly equivalent to what oral cancer is today. But the death rate for cervical cancer has declined by 74 % since 1955. Not only that, but the death rate continues to decline by almost 4 % per year. Why? The Pap test. With women receiving Pap tests as a routine part of an annual exam, cervical cancers are being detected very early these days, allowing them to be treated more successfully. The 5-year survival rate for the earliest stage of cervical cancer is 92 %. This means that if the cancer is detected early, nearly all women will survive.

A Different Story

Oral cancer's survival rate has remained fairly consistent, with no significant change since 1976. The main reason why this is so is the continued delayed diagnosis of oral cancer. Over two thirds of patients diagnosed with oral cancer are already expressing symptoms, and fifty percent of them evidence metastases and spread of the cancer to regional lymph nodes, which can drop the survival rate to 20 %.

Following the success of the Pap test, there were attempts to apply the same brush cytology technology to oral cancer screening . However, these attempts failed because the deep layers of oral lesions, those most likely to contain abnormal cells, are not sampled by the brush cytology, leading to false negative rates of 30-63%. As a result, brush cytology tests are not commonly used in screening for oral cancer. Instead, the most common technique used for oral cancer screening is visual inspection with the naked eye.

A New Innovation

Recently, though, a new breakthrough has made oral cancer screening quick and effective. The VELscope and other optical screening tools allow dentists to screen for oral cancer in 1-2 minutes with a much higher degree of accuracy than brush cytology.

Normal, healthy tissue fluoresces (emits light) when exposed to particular frequencies of light, in this case, a blue color light. The VELscope transmits this light, and the mucosal tissue responds by radiating light that, when viewed through the patented handpiece filters, appears a bright green. In contrast, abnormal tissue appears as a dark, irregular shape. This suspicious mass is further examined using a biopsy. According to clinical studies, the VELscope oral cancer screening system detects 98 % of tumors and pre-tumors.

With the ease of this new screening tool, there is no reason why a person undergoing a routine dental examination and/or cleaning should not have an oral cancer screening.