Oral Cancer: Are you at risk and don't know it?

Could you be at risk for oral cancer and not know it?  During oral cancer awareness month, Dr. Pat Carroll with Exceptional Dentistry in Louisville joins Tony Cruise with what you should be looking for.  When was the last time you were checked?  

Episode Transcript

(00:03):
Good morning. I'm Tony Cruz alongwith doctor Pat Carroll with Exceptional Dentistry.
Doctor Carroll, thanks for joining usthis morning. It is Oral Cancer Awareness
Month. When did this start?This particular mud now, that's Tony.
I don't know. As far asI know, through my lifetime as a
dentist, which has been about fortyyears now, it's always been this month,

(00:26):
So I don't know anything before thathappened. Yeah, but I know
we've been talking about this annually forprobably the last five or six years,
and you know, sometimes I feellike a broken record because it's we're not
getting a lot better at it.That's the problem. Really, have you
had patients in your time and youknow with the chair so to speak,

(00:47):
that you've had to give them upsome bad news? Oh of course,
yes, sir. Yeah. Thislast week, you know, there were
two instances where I saw some thingsthat we had to talk to some patients
about about some problem of the stuff. It's really kind of sad because around
fifty five thousand people a year inthe United States are diagnosed with oral cancer
and over eleven thousand people of themdie. And the bad thing about it,

(01:11):
of course, there's many bad thingsabout it, But it's really a
really preventable disease. You know,back when I first got out of dental
school, the big three things thatcaused oral cancer were excessive alcohol, tobacco
use, or just really really badoral hygiene. And those three things still
contribute. And as you can hearfrom just what I'm saying, those are

(01:34):
all things that are preventable. Youknow, if you can, you can
stop those three things too. Butrecently, what we're seeing now is a
rise in oral cancers, raised aboutone percent a year. It's most of
that most of that rise is dueto HPV related cancers. HPV is the
human pep I can't say human pepolmavirus, sorry about that, say that early

(01:59):
in the morning. And there's afew of those that a few of those
viruses that cause it. Now,human capitoloma virus causes almost all cervical cancers
and that's when we we we developeda vaccine against it for that. But
now from sexual contact oral sex,that disease is now being spread to or

(02:20):
that cause is now being spread throughoutthe population. The problem with HPV related
cancers is when you you know,when you when you and Scott come in
one of the last things I doin the exams, I grab your tongue
and I pull it back and forthand ask you to say, ah,
And we're looking for oral cancers.And that's something every dentist should do.
And if your dentist isn't, youshould ask them to do that. And

(02:42):
because the postier latter borders of thetongue, the floor of them out,
those are the areas we see thesethings mostly. The problem with HPV related
cancers is most of them are occurringin the old pharnex, which is kind
of the middle third of your throat, and that stuff we can't see,
so it's made you know, it'svery hard to visualize that, and so
we don't find those until there's somesymptoms, and of course at that point

(03:05):
they progressed, so they're much morethey're much harder to cure. When you
say to appreciable, I'm sorry whenyou say symptoms, what are symptoms,
Well, you know you're gonna haveeither maybe some blood you sore throat,
chronic sore throat, chronic burning,you know us those kinds of things are
the symptoms you see. But bythen you've got you know, you've got

(03:29):
a significant lesion. And the reallysad thing about this, Tony, is
that with vaccination for HPV, it'salmost totally preventable. When this when they
when the HPV vaccine came out,they did this study and they had over
two thousand women in the study,and granted these were young women, but
in following these women over the nexttwelve years, none of them, none

(03:52):
of them zero developed at HPV relatedcervical cancer. So we know these things
are effective. But the sad thingabout it is as of last year,
only about sixty percent of the femalesand fifty fifty six percent of males we're
getting the HPV vaccine. And thisvaccine is best given between before a patient

(04:13):
before a person becomes sexually active,so between hopefully between the ages of nine
and thirteen when these things are given. And there are just so many parents
that aren't even aware of this.So you know, my bigre come away
from this is, you know,talk to your pediatrician find out is it
should be done. I mean,that's what I hard upon my kids and
get my grandkids. And you know, some people don't even know they they're
around. So it's a really preventabledisease and we could really knock these numbers

(04:38):
down if we did that. SoI mean that's my little soapbox speech.
Well, I mean it's important forsure. I mean, if you're you
know, we're seeing this, asyou said, a rate of well one
percent more. It seems like everyyear it's not just related to you know,
chewing tobacco or over drinking and thosekinds of things. Now it's it's
also this and so it's something thatwe have to deal with in society.

(05:00):
So good information is hology. Well, Tony, thank you for letting me
come on. I said, it'sa little more serious subject than we talk
about sometimes, but I think it'sthings people need to hear, and you
know, think about that and talkto your pediatrician please. All right,
thanks Doc Carroll. We really appreciateyou with exceptional dentistry. Doctor Pat Carroll
here on news radio A forty wh as a kiteck Ada is one of

(05:23):
the news. Scott Fitzhered has ajack of Fortune. Just a few we've
got the traffic and weather right now. Of course, John Channon the news
coming up very shortly on news radioeight forty w H A S three models