A Simple Technique for Diagnosing Oral Cancer

More people suffer from oral cancer than skin cancer or uterine cancer, however more women have regular pap smears and more people consult dermatologists about moles or keratotic lesions than contact dentists for oral lesions. Until recently a suspicious oral lesion needed to be removed by scalpel biopsy for evaluation, an uncomfortable procedure at best. For this reason many suspicious oral lesions were watched for months for changes before proceeding with a scalpel biopsy, allowing an early dysplastic lesion to advance to a life threatening degree. 

Dentists now have at their disposal a simple painless procedure for evaluation of suspicious oral lesions. The procedure uses a tiny brush to scrape the surface of the lesion and apply the few removed cells onto a glass slide for evaluation. The scraping is painless and does not require any anesthetic. The glass slide is boxed and sent to a lab that uses a computer to scan the cells looking for abnormal cells. In a sea of hundreds of thousands of normal cells the computer can detect one abnormal cell. In addition to being very accurate the test is also almost foolproof. If the dentist did not scrape deep enough to get basal cells this is automatically detected by the computer and the pathologists at the lab, at which time they request another brush biopsy specimen and repeat the test at no additional
charge. 

The test is called OralCDx and can be preformed by any dentist. The cost is in the range of $165 and frequently is covered by insurance. There is no reason to risk the ravages of oral cancer from a lesion left untreated now that a simple test is available.

John V. Reitz, D.D.S., F.A.G.D.
Signature Dental Care
30 Commerce Drive
Wyomissing, PA 19610
Phone: 610-320-9993
E-mail: jreitz@reitzdds.com

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