Screening for oral cancer--a matter of life or death

During dental school admission interviews, applicants often mention that one of the appeals of choosing dentistry over medicine is the avoidance of life-or-death situations. Paradoxically if a dentist is a vigilant clinician, and an astute and knowledgeable diagnostician, he or she may be involved in the early detection of one of the approximately 29,370 new cases of oral cavity/oropharyngeal cancer estimated by the American Cancer Society to have occurred in the United States last year' This incidence is nearly three times the amount of estimated cervical carcinoma cases during the same time period and nearly 5000 more than the estimated new cases of thyroid cancer. Although the American Cancer Society estimates that both this past year's cases of leukemia and cutaneous melanoma occurred more often--34,810 and 59,580, respectively-oral cancer continues to represent a significant unknown, initially silent, and subsequently painful morbid disease and often relentless killer of the American public.