April is National Oral Cancer Awareness Month

Free Oral Cancer Screenings for the public, April 23-27, 2012.

Midwest Dental is providing free visual head and neck oral cancer exams during the last week in April to educate the community about oral health. While all patients routinely receive visual head, neck, and oral cancer screenings during regular visits, April is recognized as Oral Cancer Awareness Month by the Oral Cancer Foundation. Midwest Dental is partnering with the Oral Cancer Foundation to bring community awareness about the important aspects of early screening and detection for this type of cancer.

It is not necessary to be a current Midwest Dental patient to receive these screenings, and this is at no cost to you. Patients who are screened and need further evaluation will be referred to a specialist. Enhanced screenings are also available for an additional cost, and can help to identify suspicious lesions earlier. A portion of the proceeds from the enhanced screenings will be donated to the Oral Cancer Foundation.

There are several important facts to recognize about oral cancer:

• Oral cancer is the largest group of cancers which fall into the head and neck cancer category, and approximately 37,000 people in the US were newly diagnosed with oral cancer in 2011, projected to increase to 40,000 by the end of 2012.
• Oral cancer is now being diagnosed in younger age groups (20s and 30s), even if they don’t use tobacco products.
• There continues to be an increase in the rate of occurrence of oral cancers.
• There are two distinct pathways by which most people come to oral cancer. One is through the use of tobacco and alcohol, a long term historic problem and cause, and the other is through exposure to the HPV-16 virus. A small percentage of people do get oral cancers from no currently identified cause.
• While some think this is a rare cancer, mouth cancer will be newly diagnosed in about 100 new individuals each day in the US alone. A person dies from oral cancer every hour of every day.
• When found at early stages of development, people with oral cancers have an 80 to 90% survival rate. Unfortunately at this time, the majority is found as late stage cancers, and this accounts for the very high death rate of about 45% at five years from diagnosis.

See Locations on our website for more information about your local office hours and Oral Cancer screening information. For more information about Oral Cancer Awareness, visit the Oral Cancer Foundation.

Midwest Dental, based in Mondovi, WI, is a team of hometown dentists committed to the health and well-being of families and communities.