Early detection, which is one of the obstacles to reducing the death rate and also reducing the morbidity of treatments that patients end up with, is the Holy Grail. Because it is no longer easy to distinguish who needs to be screened, OCF is asking dentists, ENT's, hygienists, general MD's etc. to screen everyone that walks in their door opportunistically at lest once a year. There is high resistance to this in the professional communities. We have to show them how to make this a profit center in their practice if we are going to get compliance, and also get insurers on board with coverage for simple eyeball and finger screenings. Another challenge to be overcome is that most of the professionals that I listed above don't know how to screen properly, and keep proper records of things. This is something that we are working on, and by February's end OCF will publicly issue a standard of care statement that the ADA should have done years ago. This is going to make waves in the professional community that think that you cannot get sued for failure to meet standards of care that do not exist As someone who has been deposed in plenty of lawsuits against dental and medical professionals I can tell you that there is an implied standard of behavior, since they have been taught in school how to do things, and there has been plenty of effort in the professions to get them involved. There is no ignorance at play here, there is only lack of involvement and compliance in doing what they know should be done, and staying current with the information.

But what would make much of this easier is a sieving process to mass screen from the general population, people that are at risk. We used to say over 50, male, black smokers were mandatory, but with the virus it is a whole new game. We don't know who. So the saliva test is a mass-screening tool that can be administered by any assistant, read by a computer chip inexpensively, and we can pull out of a general population those people that have the biomarkers to develop the disease. Once they have been identified, those are the people who the professional community needs to keep an eye on for the first manifestation of a disease state or pre malignant condition. This sieving process is a necessary tool, combined with a non-complacent professional population, and an American public that has heard about the disease and knows to get screened each year just as women do in cervical cancer exams.

In Canada, conventional screenings are sending people to designated dysplasia clinics where they will be watched and not allowed to fall though the cracks and end up with a delay in diagnosis. Combine that with an agressive tobacco cessation and viral cause public education effort, and you have a winner. Clearly since the state is paying for the medical care, they get that early detection before very expensive curative treatments are needed saves the government dollars and yields the best outcomes for their population.

You guys want to get all excited and email professionals about things....THIS message is what they need to be on board with. A new swish test or the salivary diagnostic test is only one piece of the puzzle, and by itself IS NOT going to change the world or the death rate from this disease.