Louis Malcmacher DDS MAGD Printer Friendly Version

Be a Hero and Save Your Patient’s Life!

Oral cancer. These are two words that dentists hope they will never have to say to a patient throughout their entire career. Oral cancer kills one American every hour of every single day. A number of famous people have become victims of oral cancer, among them Babe Ruth, Sigmund Freud, Bill Blass and Jack Klugman. You and I both know that when a lesion is found in the mouth that may be squamous cell carcinoma, there is a 50% to 70% chance that the patient may not live past the next five years. They will also need radical surgery and major reconstruction that runs into the hundreds of thousands of dollars and causes immeasurable pain and suffering.

By the way, the number one finding of a recent dental patient survey done by the Crown Council was that patients want to hear more about oral cancer. CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta recently did a story on oral cancer. Consumers are ready to get involved with learning more about their mouths and certainly want to be involved with oral cancer prevention.

I often wonder why we, as dental professionals, don’t take the detection of oral cancer seriously enough. Look carefully at my words: We do take it seriously, but we do not take it seriously enough. I would suggest that one of the reasons is because patients don’t take the detection of oral cancer very seriously either, just like many patients don’t take their oral health very seriously at all. I can tell you with certainty that if patients took oral cancer more seriously, then so would the entire dental profession.

When you look at other cancer awareness programs, some organizations have done an absolutely outstanding job at creating a very high awareness of certain types of cancer. Every woman knows how to do a breast cancer self-exam and routinely goes for mammograms, and everyone over the age of 50 knows that it is time to go for a colonoscopy. These types of self-examinations and screenings have helped to save many, many lives over the years and have reduced the mortality rate of these dreaded cancers very substantially.

An established self-examination for oral cancer would be a huge help in finding abnormalities or incipient oral cancer lesions early on. This kind of self-examination, much like a breast examination or a skin examination, is easy to do, does not require any special equipment and will help familiarize people with their own mouths. The primary benefit is early detection of any unusual lesions in the patients’ mouths and the secondary benefit would be consumers becoming much more familiar with their mouths, which would prompt them to seek treatment for oral health issues that they usually ignore.

My children, David Malcmacher and Shana Meystel, have heard me lecture about oral cancer a number of times and, being much more technologically advanced than I am, have developed a web site for consumers and dentists that show people how to do a self-examination for oral cancer. Because so many American consumers still do not have regular dentists, there is also a “find a dentist” section. Dentists who are committed to oral cancer examinations or the early detection of oral cancer via screenings can also sign up to be listed on the web site www.oralcancerselfexam.com.

This web site will be heavily marketed to consumers so that this oral cancer self-exam will become part and parcel of what people normally do to help find these lesions much sooner. The number of oral cancer cases per year has not gone down in the last 40 years, which should pretty much tell us that what we as dental professionals have been doing has not been working.

I strongly urge all of the attendees of my courses to use some type of oral cancer screening device, whether it is Vizilite Plus or a Velscope. Those who know me know that Vizilite Plus has been the choice in my office for a number of years because of its cost-effectiveness, ease of use and the Tblue stain that comes with the kit. The Tblue staining system that comes with Vizilite Plus is an essential part of screening, if anything is found, and no other system includes it. Vizilite Plus will help screen your patients and will help you find suspicious lesions much earlier than you normally would. After that, either a brush biopsy like Oral CDX or a traditional biopsy should be used on the lesion for either histological examination or total removal.

Getting the patients on board to fight this dreaded disease is crucial and overdue; institute early detection screening into your practice as soon as possible. Patients are looking for dentists who take oral cancer seriously. Let’s all work together because if dental professionals don’t take this lead, no one will. It is completely up to us. Go to www.oralcancerselfexam.com today and show your patients how committed you are to detecting and treating oral cancer.

Dr. Louis Malcmacher is a practicing general dentist in Bay Village, Ohio and an internationally known lecturer, dental consultant and author, and consultant to the Council on Dental Practice of the ADA. Interested in knowing more about how to truly enjoy dentistry? Click here.

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To reach Dr. Malcmacher, email him at DrMalcmacher@thedentistsnetwork.net or call 1.800.952.0521