Oral Cancer: What you need to know
Each year in the US alone, almost 50,000 individuals are newly diagnosed with oral cancer. Oral cancer is the largest group of those cancers which fall into the head and neck category. The death rate from oral cancer is very high; about 43% of those diagnosed will not survive more than five years. Knowing your lifestyle and early detection could be the two factors that can avoid or reduce the risk of oral cancer. Tobacco and chewing tobacco, along with alcohol are the leading causes of it. Most oral cancer can be caught early with screenings performed at the dental office. These screenings are painless, quick, and inexpensive. At Dental Designs: Dentistry Of Naples and Fort Myers we provide this vital service with the purpose of finding any changes in the oral tissue. We would like to introduce the VELscope Vx tool, used by dental professionals as an aid to examination for oral abnormalities and premalignant dysplasia. The VELscope’s blue light stimulates natural fluorescen