Source: www.fourstateshomepage.com Author: Mike Olmstead JOPLIN, Mo. — A routine cleaning last fall at Missouri Southern’s Dental Hygiene Clinic led to quite the discovery by a dental hygiene student. Senior Emily Valence was actually examining her future father-in-law, when she noticed a whitish area under his tongue. Mike Eddings, who lives in Ozark, has never smoked or chewed tobacco — so what was found came as a shock. He eventually saw a specialist who determined it was a pre-malignant cancerous lesion. “Very relieving. When they find something like pre-cancerous like that, it is best to get it removed as fast as possible, because normally oral cancer is a very fast-spreading cancer, so who knows how long, you know, it could’ve been until it was spreading to farther stages?” said Valence. “That is just an example of the program working and the education working and them actually absorbing it. And these are our hygienists of the future. They are who is going to be taking care of us 10, 20, 30 years from now,” said Dr. Dennis Abbott, MSSU Adjunct Clinical Supervising Dentist. Valence will graduate in May. Her future father-in-law is doing just fine.    

Author: Darlene Dobkowski, MA Source: www.curetoday.com A recent study demonstrated that a lower dose of radiation after surgery for HPV-related throat cancer may provide a greater benefit than a higher dose of radiation with chemotherapy. Transoral robotic surgery followed by low-dose radiation may reduce treatment intensity and improve long-term quality of life compared to usual care, which consists of high-dose radiation and chemotherapy, in patients with HPV-associated throat cancer, recent study findings demonstrate. Positive results from the E3311 study led by the ECOG-ACRIN Cancer Research Group may have been related to the ability of researchers to categorize patients by risk before undergoing surgery. “The study was very helpful in that it gave us a big national sample of people getting transoral surgery,” said Dr. Barbara Burtness, a professor of medicine at Yale School of Medicine, lead of the Head/Neck Cancer Research Program at Yale and a co-leader of the Developmental Therapeutics Program at the Yale Cancer Center, in an interview with CURE®. “It helped us to understand if our rules for deciding who was low risk, intermediate risk and high risk reflected the real natural biology of the cancer. I think that they gave us the first signs that with pathologic staging in HPV-associated cancer, you can actually reduce the intensity of the postoperative treatment. So we actually reported extremely remarkable results.” Increased Incidence of HPV-Associated Throat Cancer Over the past few decades, there has been an increase in throat cancer associated with HPV, which is usually transmitted through sexual [...]

Author: Stacey L. Gividen, DDS Source: www.dentistryiq.com Remember that case about the pathology on the right posterior lateral border of the tongue that had some “meat” to it? The lesion was small, caused no discomfort, and would have gone on to be something much worse had it not been caught early. What was the definitive? Well, as suspected, it was cancer—squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) to be exact. Refreshers regarding pathology are always good for us, so take a quick second and read up on this type of cancer that is more common than you think. Chances are, you’ve diagnosed this before; if you haven’t, keep looking because at some point in your career, you will. Stats/General Information 1 What is SCC? It’s an end-stage alteration in stratified squamous epithelium, beginning as an epithelial dysplasia until the dysplastic epithelial cells breach the basement membrane and invade the connective tissue. Another common name is epidermoid carcinoma. SCC represents 3% of all cancer in males, 2% in females. The survival rate is 50% SCC is the most common malignant neoplasm of the oral cavity, representing approximately 90% of all oral cancers. Etiologic factors: Tobacco habit, Alcohol consumption Viruses Actinic radiation Immunosuppression Nutritional deficiencies Preexisting diseases Chronic irritation. Treatment 1 Clinical staging of the head and neck using the TNM system (T = primary tumor; N = regional lymph node; M = distant metastasis). There is a specific system for the oral cavity. Treatment is by surgical excision, radiation therapy, and if extensive enough, [...]