Another side of the statistics coin -- why are they so poor? One reason is -- late diagnosis. Too many people like my husband are diagnosed in advanced stages III and IV, even though they go regularly to a doctor or dentist. Read what ADA says (on the OCF web site) about dentists' responsibilities. Yet my husband, who goes 4x a year to his (supposedly top) dentist for cleaning never had his enlarged tonsil or the growth at back of tongue noticed (when I looked, obviously assymetrical amounts of tissue in both sites).

One thing to improve statistics that we, as patients or caregivers of patients, can do is improve the rate of oral cancer screening and educate our friends and relatives about getting screened, especially if they smoke.

I think it is pretty bad that there is still no routine screening for SCC cells in at least those parts of the mouth reachable by a "brush" (like that used for pap tests) -- while women have been screened for over 35 years for cervical SCC. Barry was tested at Hopkins for HPV and they also took tissue, using the same type of probe as is used for pap tests, ran it over his tonsils, back of tongue, soft palate and under tongue and smeared the scrapings on a slide, again same way as for a pap test. Then off to the pathologist.

Maybe in the future there will be some better screening method than just a casual glance by a dentist or doctor who is not really paying attention...

Gail