JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – Of the 36,000 people who will be diagnosed with oral cancer this year, only slightly more than half will be alive in 5 years.
Every hour, one person dies of oral cancer.
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Survivor rates are so low because it's often not detected until too late. A simple and painless test at the dentist office could change those odds.
Robert Levine said he avoided disaster when his dentist, during a routine visit, found something on the bottom of his tongue.
"He saw a white spot on one side," said Levine.
The almost undetectable spot was dysplasia -- a precancerous cell.
"One of the biggest problems, once we find it and diagnosis: survival is less than a year," said Dr. David Godin, a head and neck surgeon at Beth Israel Hospital.
Godin said the key is to find it early before a precancerous cell turns into a carcinoma. Ninty-five But this killer can be caught at the dentist office are carcinomas.
Mark Rutenberg used technology he created in the military to determine nuclear warheads from decoys to create OralCDx. It's used to detect abnormal cells among normal cells. It's a brush test that sweeps across the inside of the mouth. There's no anesthesia and takes just a few minutes.
"We check the mouth for white spots and red spots," said Samuel Horowitz, a dentist.
More on the OralCDx Test: CDXdiagnostics.com/OralCDx.html
Traditionally, cancerous cells were found after lesions or other symptoms appear. Then doctors performed a biopsy, which could miss cancerous cells.
The brush biopsy is sent to a lab, where 200 of the most suspicious cells are analyzed by specially-trained pathologists. A cancerous cell has six to eight genetic mutations. A precancerous cell has four.
"If you can find those cells and remove them, you can prevent cancer before it starts," Rutenberg said.
Gastroenterologist Elliot Heller, took part in a clinical trial using a similar brush test plus the traditional biopsy to detect esophageal cancer, said they had a 40 percent increase in finding the cancer.
Although there is no one cause of oral cancer, a rise in this disease in women is believed to be due to a rise in HPV -- a sexually-transmitted disease.
Among men, more are using smokeless chewing tobacco, which also contributes to oral cancer.
Background About Oral Cancer
Oral cancer is cancer of the mouth. An estimated 350,000 to 400,000 new cases are diagnosed each year. Approximately half of people with oral cancer will live more than five years after they are diagnosed and treated. If the cancer is found early, before it has spread to other tissues, the cure rate is nearly 90 percent. However, more than half of oral cancers have already spread when the cancer is detected. Most have spread to the throat or neck. About 1 in 4 people with oral cancer die because of delayed diagnosis and treatment. (SOURCE: PubMed Health)
CARCINOMA: Carcinomas are malignancies that originate in the epithelial tissues. Epithelial cells cover the external surface of the body, line the internal cavities, and form the lining of glandular tissues. The incidence of oral tongue squamous cell carcinoma has been rising in young white American women, according to a new report. For the past three decades, the incidence has been increasing in white men and white women 18 to 44 years of age, but the trend is most pronounced in young white women.
EARLY TESTING: The OralCDx BrushTest is an easy, painless and definitive way for doctors to test the common small white and red oral spots that most people have in their mouth at one time or another. The BrushTest is used to determine if a common oral spot contains abnormal cells (known as dysplasia) that, if left alone for several years, may develop into oral cancer.
It typically takes several years before a dysplastic oral spot can turn into an oral cancer, and during this time, the spot can be removed, and oral cancer can potentially be prevented from even starting. OralCDx consists of a specially-designed brush that is used to painlessly obtain a sample of an oral lesion. In contrast to a typical cytologic smear, like a Pap smear, which samples cells only from the superficial layer, the OralCDx brush obtains a complete transepithelial biopsy specimen by collecting cells from all three layers of the epithelium: the superficial, intermediate and the basal layer. OralCDx requires no anesthesia, causes no pain and is associated with minimal or no bleeding. (SOURCE: OralCDx)