• 11/7/2004
  • no attribution
  • Medical News Today

“Conversation Killer” is the theme of this year’s Mouth Cancer Awareness Week. The week runs from 7-13 November with the aim of highlighting the growth of a disease that kills 50 per cent of sufferers. The week aims to highlight the ways in which people can protect themselves against the dangers of mouth cancer, namely to stop smoking, reduce alcohol consumption, eat healthily and visit their dentist regularly.

In the UK alone, over 4,300 new cases of mouth cancer are diagnosed annually and 1,700 people die of mouth cancer. The disease, often thought to affect mainly older men, is also increasingly finding victims outside its traditional sufferer group. Although the number of women sufferers remains smaller than the number of men affected, the number of newly diagnosed women has risen by 48 per cent during the last nine years. The number of newly diagnosed men has risen by just 16 per cent.

Research shows that although 76 per cent of people are aware of a link between smoking and developing mouth cancer, only 19 per cent are aware of a link between alcohol misuse and the disease.

Mouth Cancer Awareness Week 2004 is organized by a number of leading national health organisations including the British Dental Association (BDA) and British Dental Health Foundation (BDHF), and supported by Denplan.