Just wondering how many smoked or drank????
Im 54 started smoking at 21 stop 6 years before my cancer, have not had a drink of anything for 26 years. My doctors say it was my smoking.
I was inform that this is the leading cause for OC. I have not read a thread on this but Im also new to this great Web site.

I smoked and drank; I smoked about a pack a day for 15 years and I drank socially, nothing to heavy a beer or cocktail every now and then. I quit smoking in Jun after my Dx haven't had a drink since then either. My Dr says drinking is only a cause if its done to excess. So I'll probably have drink some where down the road. I haven't really thought about it though.

I smoked from the age of 18 to 29. I told myself I'd quit before I hit 30, and so I did. I am now 48yrs. old (49 next mo), so that was 18 yrs. ago that I quit. Every doctor I told, didn't seem concerned since I quit so long ago. They tell you to quit, which I did and still got it. Hey, who knows what caused this?? As for drinking, I'd say I'm a social drinker. Maybe a beer or glass of wine once a week. I've only had one glass of wine since treatment ended. I have read that there is a high recurrance rate for people who drink heavily. But again, there are so many other things all of us are exposed to in everyday life.

I smoked from age 15 to 18. Hardly drank, ever. Was 59 when I got scc. I have no doubts that there was no relation to either as a cause.

Jerry

I quit smoking 35 years ago and only drink beer and only on a social basis. I was a light smoker, maybe 10 a day. Since I quit I have been a exercise nut and always watched what I ate. My doctors still asked the smoking question as if it may have played a role. Now I am told HPV may be a cause but since that is a sexually transmitted desease and I have been faithfully married for the last 17 years and I know my wife is just as faithful, I can't see that connection either. I understand that Johns Hopkins performs a HPV-16 test that won't change anything except studies have shown that if the cancer was caused by HPV-16 the reoccurrence rate is lower than with tobacco and alcohol. I haven't had a drink since Dx but I haven't really been in a social climate. I KNOW I don't want to do ANYTHING that MAY cause a reoccurrence but that is a topic for a question I want to Post. Maybe soon is the time.

The numbers I have read are that smoking and/or heavy alcohol use are the primary causitive agent in around 80% of OC.

I quit smoking in 1976, pot in in 1986 and alcohol in 1995.

Go to this link: http://www.oralcancerfoundation.org/tobacco/index.htm

And then this one: http://www.sptimes.com/News/61599/Floridian/He_wanted_you_to_know.shtml

There is no question that current or recent smoking raises the odds.

But the causal link appears to be less clear for people who quit smoking, depending on how long ago they stopped. For example, my husband -- not a heavy smoker to begin with -- quit more than 20 years ago, and his doctor at Hopkins CCC says he considers him to be in the same "category" as patients who have never smoked.

As for HPV, a CDC web page about the new vaccine, Gardasil, notes that it is possible for the virus to remain in a non-detectable dormant state and then reactivate many years later.

So who knows?

The Mashberg article, which now a decade old is still quoted the most at cancer conferences in relationship to the % of OC patients in which tobacco was a contributing factor, uses 75% as the number. Clearly in the US, the etiology of this disease is in transition. Tobacco use in the US has declined every year for the last 12 years. If that is the primary etiology of OC, then how can the occurrence rate of OC stay at the same level, and even increase slightly this year? (Almost 1,000 additional cases. ACS projections based on SEER nubers.) The fact is that because the fastest growing segment of the OC population is no longer the typical over 50, 2 to 1 black over white, 3 to 1 male over female, tobacco user - and is now someone between 20 and 50 who is a non smoker, predominantly white, educated, and with females slightly edging out males, they believe that HPV is the replacement causative agent keeping the numbers high and where this new sub demographic is coming from. Smokers and tobacco chewers however are still at the top of the pile in total numbers. But as America loses its love affair with tobacco, viruses are taking its place in the OC world.

Hi guys,

I had smoked for 20 years - about 1/2 pack a day and did not drink. My ENT told me at the end of our first appointment that I had 2 weeks to say good-bye to the cigarettes. He flat out said if I wanted a chance at beating the cancer, the smoking had to stop. I have not had a smoke since mid-night March 29, 2004. I haven't even been tempted. I do now enjoy a couple of beers a week -never cared for the taste pre-cancer but I guess my taste is altered just enough that it's OK and the clean rinse on my throat is great-it's the only drink besides water that isn't slimy to my throat. My doctor is OK with the beer in moderate amounts - he says alcohol is more of a risk factor when combined with the tobacco. So all that to say that smoking was the likely cause of my cancer.

Pam

I am so glad to see this subject discussed. I smoked some in high school, college, and early adulthood. I quit smoking the day my husband got home from Vietnam, in 1969, and I haven't had even one more cigarette since then. I was 62 last year when my SCC was diagonsed.

My doctor asked if I had ever smoked, and I said, "Yes, 37 years ago." He said that that, then, was the cause of my cancer....that the statistics say that even long-ago smoking is now considered a causative factor. I don't personally agree, and everybody's comments here seem to back that up.

He said that if not smoking, then it was caused by genetic factors, and it would be better for me if it were caused by smoking.

Hmmmmm......

It isn't ringing true to me.

My cancer developed on the gum of my upper jaw in a place that had been irritated off and on for several years.....or longer. It couldn't have been cancer for that long....could it?

When the cancer did develop, I didn't immediately become concerned because I was so accustomed to having that area give me problems.

By the time I became concerned....about 9 months before my diagnosis....my dentist didn't recognize it as a problem......even though I was complaining then of earaches on that side. Two months before my dx, he cauterized the area, and did not have me return for him to check it. Two weeks before my dx, he scraped and cauterized it again, and did not have me return.

I am trying to figure all of this out. I know that the dentist goofed big-time, but that is in the past. However, knowing that this cancer was in my mouth for longer than necessary is pretty dis-heartening.

Also...here's a new question: Will all of that cauterizing and scraping and....finally....the biopsy stir up the cancer cells and free them to metasticize? My surgical margins were clear and my neck nodes were all negative, though the lesion was pretty large (T2, based on size and length of time it was present.)

HPV is an STD, right? I can't imagine how I could get that, so I will dismiss that as a cause, though I wouldn't mind being tested just to find out.

If not smoking 37 years ago, and not drinking, and not HPV....what could be the cause of my SCC? Most literature no longer lists constant irritation of an area as a causative factor....but isn't that what smoking does?

I suppose that many of us won't ever know for sure what caused the cancer, but it would help to know how likely recurrence or additional primaries are, and the cause would be significant in determining that.

I look forward to reading other histories and opinions.