In honor of Oral Cancer Awareness Month, Reunion Dental Care will be offering free oral cancer screening on Saturday April 30, 2011. Oral cancer is not a rare disease. Approximately 37,000 people will be diagnosed with oral cancer every year in the US . It kills one person every hour of every day, and over 100 new individuals will be diagnosed with it each day. The good news is that it can often be found early it its development, through a simple, painless, and quick screening.
Who should get screened?
Every adult. Oral cancer can often be caught early, even as a pre-cancer. With early detection survival rates are high and the side effects are from treatment are at their lowest. Like other screenings you engage in such as cervical, skin, prostate, colon and breast examinations, oral cancer screenings are an effective means of finding cancer at its early, highly curable stages. Make them part of your annual health check-ups.
What are the risk factors?
There are two distinct pathways by which most people come to oral cancer. One in through the sue of tobacco and alcohol, a long term historic problem and cause, and the other is through exposure to the HPV16 virus(human papilloma virus verison1 16) a newly identified etiology, and the same one, which is responsible for the vast majority of cervical cancers in women. The quickest growing segment of the oral cancer population are young, healthy, non-smokers due to the connection to this virus.
Early Indicators:
Red and/ or white discolorations of the soft tissues of the month.
Any sore which does not heal within 14 days.
Hoarseness which lasts for a prolonged period of time.
Advanced Indicators:
A sensation that something is stuck in your throat
Numbness in the oral region,
Difficulty in moving the jaw or tongue
Difficulty is swallowing.
Ear pain which occurs on one side only.
A sore under a denture, which even after adjustment of the denture, still does not heal.
A lump or thickening which develops in the mouth or on the neck
An oral cancer screening should be conducted every year, so take advantage of this free offer and get screened today. Call Reunion Dental Care at 303-928-7838 to make an appointment for your complimentary screening on Saturday morning from 8:00 am to 11:00 am on April 30, 2011.
