i am a student writing my extended essay on the importance of the early diagosis of oral cancer. i am interested in all of your opinions and experiences. pls help! thanks alot

Please read these sections of the web site to get the background information; on this message board read the very first post by me in the activism forum. In the dental section read the role of the dental community.

In all cancers the reduction in deaths has primarily come through early detection. For all our medicine and science, it is still the act of finding it early that is the best precursor to a survival of cancer, oral or otherwise. For over 40 years the death rate from oral cancer has remained the same. This is particularly disturbing since most early, treatable and survivable oral cancers are being missed by those who could be finding them with the naked eye. There is little public awareness, and that has to be changed as well. This killer has been left alone to ruin lives for too long. OCF was formed with these goals in our charter, to educate the public, to support those in the process of the fight, and to make change in the system through proactive means to see that early diagnosis becomes a reality.

Thank you all for your inspiring words. Sometimes one must search to find a dentist that he/she feels is doing an adequate job. Unfortunately I went through 4 dentist until I found one who checked out everything. Another good suggestion is to maybe see an ENT since that are one of the mostly likely referrals of a dentist suspious of a lesion in the mouth or lump on the neck