Oral Cancer Health Video

Video Transcript

JUSTIN C.K. DAVIS, M.D.: Hi. My name is Dr. Justin Davis. Today, I would like to tell you a little bit about oral cancer. Now oral cancer is an important cancer because about 30,000 Americans are diagnosed annually with it, and up to 7,000 people will die from oral cancer every year. Oral cancer is a kind of cancer that affects some part of your mouth; this may be your lips, the inside of your mouth, the salivary glands, the tongues, or even the insides of the cheeks. Now the good news is, is that when detected early, oral cancer is very curable and has a very high success rate in getting rid of it completely. What are the symptoms of oral cancer? Usually it can be subtle at first, and as it grows bigger it can become more obvious. Typically, the most common symptom is some kind of change in the mucosa or the cell lining of either the lips, the tongue, or somewhere in the inside of the mouth. Maybe it is a cut that seems like it is just not healing or an ulceration that does not get better. It may be a constant pain or perhaps a little lump starts to form and gets bigger and bigger. Whatever it is, it is important to get that checked out right away because remember the best cure rate is when it is caught early. So what do we do to treat it? It is usually a combination: first of surgery to cut out the part that has the cancer followed by perhaps radiation or occasionally chemotherapy to try to get rid of the rest of the cells. What can you do to prevent this? The biggest risk factor in developing oral cancer is tobacco products including chewing tobacco and alcohol use. Other things or may be toxic chemicals, constant irritation such as by chewing your lip, biting the insides of your mouth or your tongue all the time or maybe having ill fitting dentures, but again the biggest risk factor is if you can avoid excessive alcohol use and any kind of tobacco use. So by limiting or avoiding these, you are on a good path to preventing oral cancer. What should you do if you think that you may have oral cancer? There are many other problems that can mimic oral cancer and are not oral cancer at all so first of all do not panic but equally, if you think that you have these symptoms, do not wait to let someone know. Let a doctor either a dermatologist may be a general practitioner or an internist or an ear, nose, throat specialist evaluate it right away. They may take a small cell sample and then they can determine if it is something like a cancer that needs to be treated right away or perhaps it is some other problem that can be treated differently.