Catch the crab before it bites!!!

Cancer is one of the deadliest diseases affecting the mankind causing 6 million deaths every year, worldwide. Oral cancer is the number one among all cancers in male patients and number three among cancers in female patients. It takes only a 90-second visual and tactile examination to achieve early detection in basic oral cancer examination. Oral cancer screening has relied upon the conventional oral examination of patients. Early diagnosis of oral cancer is a major area of concern, since 60% of these cases are diagnosed late in their course of the disease. When found early oral cancer survival rate is 80-85%, so need of the hour is to educate the dentist on the latest available technical/diagnostic aids. Failure to diagnose oral cancer is rising, and can prove difficult to defend. New technologies have provided an exciting new array of clinical diagnostic tools for localizing or emphasizing abnormal mucosa in the dental clinic. Some of these technologies claim to identify atypical cells prior to biopsy, even before there are clinically visible changes. Hence allow a more confident as assessment of risk and localization of the most "suspicious" area to biopsy. A variety of commercial diagnostic aids are available to potentially assist in the screening of healthy patients for evidence of otherwise occult cancerous change or to assess the biologic potential of clinically abnormal mucosal lesions. The prevention of oral cancer and its associated morbidity and mortality hinges upon the early detection of neoplastic lesions, allowing for histologic evaluation and treatment as necessary. This poster deliberates these newer technologies and their importance in early diagnosing of Oral Cancer. Keywords: oral cancer, early detection, diagnostic aids