Hi everyone! Hope you are having a great day. I was wondering what the odds of a family memeber of a OC survivor developing the same cancer is? Since my sister has been diagnosed I was wondering if we as family should be checked more frequently. My sister has unfortunatly been the first one in the family diagnosed with cancer but it is due to her previous smoking habit( she quit day of surgery). I do have a few friends diagnosed with breast cancer and now their families are checked earlier and more frequent for breast cancer. Just wondering if we should do the same. We are also changing to dr's and dentist's that actually check for OC during a check up. I can not believe how many do not do a full check up.

[quote=Susan3175] My sister has unfortunatly been the first one in the family diagnosed with cancer but it is due to her previous smoking habit( she quit day of surgery). [/quote]

That statement bothers me as it is finger pointing towards your sister or to any former smoker on here. Oral cancer has many causes and more are being discovered all the time. Genetic predisposition, oral hygene, HPV, smoking, many have unknown origins. At this time doctors are not able to say what causes a person's cancer. Most doctors would never tell a patient that their OC was definetly caused by smoking. It is hurtful to the patients mental well being for them to say something like that. It makes the patient blame themselves and feel tremendous guilt when they are already going thru more than enough just fighting cancer. Of course, smoking PROBABLY caused it or certainly didnt help the situation. It is not proven that OC runs in families. There are a few members who have family members who have had OC.

Thanks Christine! I never thought of my words or the dr's words having that effect on my sister. You are absolutely right. My sister does feel all these emotions. She keeps crying that she can't believe she " did this to myself". The dr also said to her that it was 80% smoking and 20% dental hygeine. Wow! Thanks for the reality check.

The doctor should have chosen his words mre carefully so he didnt cause her to feel guilty forever thinking it was all her fault. Some people have unknown causes, they have no risk factors at all. Its not possible to tell exactly why she got cancer. Dismissing it as 80% due to smoking might be correct, but who knows. There are other words that they could have used instead of chalking it up to being a smoker and having her suffer even more.

I didnt mean to sound harsh about this topic, I just hate to hear someone catagorized. Hearing a cancer diagnosis is like the end of the world for most of us. Its a terrifying time with so many emotions running rampant, extra stress isnt needed.

Your original question, everyone should have a complete dental exam. Not just those related to an OC patient. At this point it hasnt yet been proven to be caused from heredity.

I agree with Christine, that the doctor could have been way more tactful. And there are people with no known etiology that get oral cancer, and we don't know why ( about 5%). But the truth is that tobacco brings more people to it than any other cause, and it is possible to chase her cause definitively, if someone wanted to by looking at the cellular dna. The are well documented markers in tobacco carcinogenesis of cells. So he likely is right, but he is equally wrong.

There would be, and is, a softer way to suggest what happened. Unfortunately, and I do not mean to sound callous here so don't shoot me, in many things in life we are the architects of our own situation - cancer or other things. But if a patient asks you outright, and many of you here are ardent pursuers of an absolute answer, what is he supposed to say - that tobacco was not part of the equation? Most of the good doctors that I have listened to explain things, soften things, even when they know that a decade or two of tobacco use is the most likely culprit. They choose not to say anything definitive to the patient because of this very issue. It serves no good for a patient to beat themselves up emotionally after the fact, they have enough on their plate with a cancer diagnosis.

I AM A THREE YEAR TONGUE CANCER SURVIVOR ( T1NOMO) AND MY BROTHER WHO IS 15 YEARS YOUNGER DID DEVELOP THE SAME TONGUE CANCER A YEAR AFTER MY WAS TREATED. NEITHER ONE OF US SMOKE OR DRINK ALCOHOL. I DO FEEL THAT SOME OF US DEVELOP THIS CANCER BECAUSE OF GENETICS. OUR FATHER DIED FROM LUNG CANCER AT AGE 60. I DEVELPED MY TONGUE CANCER AT AGE 37, MY BROTHER WAS DIAGNOSED AT AGE 24.

GLENN -TONGUE CANCER T1NOMO, DIAGNOSED 8-1-07. CURRENTLY CANCER FREE. NO RADS AND NO CHEMO. JUST SURGERY AND NECK DISECTION. NO NODE INVOLVED.

I asked my ENT what caused the cancer and he looked at me like I was some kind of idiot and said "It's the smoking" that was the end of that conversation.

I knew the answer, and he gave me the only answer he could. I quit smoking and moved on with treatment. I won't beat myself up over the cause of my cancer and don't have time to worry about how my doctor delivers information to me as long as it is good, relevant information.

About 5 % of the people that develop anterior of the mouth oral cancers have none of the known risk factors. We just rewrote the home page of the OCF web site to include this statement. It is generally believed that like most things, we are genetically predisposed to get something, or genetically protected from it, and we don't know enough to unravel that mystery at this time. For those of us on the bad side of the gene pool, when it comes to cancers, we can thank our grandparents and their grandparents. It is just the luck of the draw.

I can see that at some time in the distant future we will not only have mapped the human genome (which we have) but we will understand what genes do what better than we do today, as well as have a fuller understanding of the human proteome. Treatments will be genetically based gene replacements and splicings to correct predispositions to many disease states when the aberration is discovered and corrected before disease develops.

While some worry that this "engineering of the human race" could lead to evil things, it is the direction that science is moving in. Even oral cancer early diagnosis is moving that way. The research OCF has sponsored with Dr. Wong at UCLA on salivary diagnostics is all based on mapping genomic and proteomic markers known to be associated with the disease development. We already have a test that can tell who out of 300 million people have the markers to develop oral cancer. It likely, at least in oral cancer, will be a test that is commercially available in the next 5 years.

Thanks for the update Brian. I hope that someday we could look at someones genes and know what the possibilities are. Also to use our genes to to protect us against this and other diseases. We have come very far in the past few years with better treatment for cancer. My sisters surgeon told us that 10 years ago she would of had a total glossectomy because reconstruction was not available at that time. Now not being able to talk and eat is not ok with him. He is a dr that is totally devoted to finding a cure for this disease amoung others. I am very grateful for people like him and you who are so dedicated to making a difference by awareness and research.
The surgeons words to her, yes I would assume were very harsh for her to hear. She was very upset knowing that smoking is most likely the cause along with her not going to the dentist. But at the sametime she was also misdiagnosed for 8 months which I think has taken the blame of herself and put on those first few dr's she incountered.

As far as me I think I am eventually going to go through the genetic testing. Not only for myself but for the child I eventually plan to have. I am also trying to put together a free cancer screening in my area with the help of Susan to make more people aware of this disease. It is a tough cancer for someone to be diagnosed with. Yes I understand that all cancers are emotionally tough, but this one seems espeacially hard. My sister feels disfigured and does not want to talk to anyone. This is a person that has a job that consists of talking to many people a day and a person that loved to go out and socialize with people. Now she don't even talk on the phone. I also plan to be consistant with my dental exams and will go to the dr for every little pain I may have. I have to! This diagnosis also changed me for the rest of my life. I am very scared.

Brian, thanks for all the detailed info. Technology is amazing. The medical advances are becoming reality before our eyes. I hope to be here long enough to see a less barbaric way to treat oral cancer. Doubt I will make it long enough to see the day when there is a cure and the disease is eradicated.

Susan, always better to be safe than sorry. Good going with putting together the screening