At Greenville Family Dentistry, we provide a full array of services to improve and maintain our clients’ oral health. Among the most important of those are oral cancer screenings. Therefore, it is of great concern to us that oral cancer diagnoses have remained steady in the United States in recent years. This is in large part due to the human papilloma virus (HPV) having superseded smoking as the main causative factor.
Tobacco, alcohol, genetics, and HPV are the most common reasons for the developments of cancers in the mouth and throat. All are more likely to occur in men, but HPV cancers are more likely to occur in young men. Anti-cancer educational efforts aimed at this generation mostly focused on tobacco and were successful in lowering the rate of smoking and chewing tobacco among young people, which will have great benefits for their long-term health. However, they may have also given them the impression that they are not in a high-risk group. In fact, while HPV-related oral cancers are more responsive to treatment than smoking-related ones, they also tend to be farther back in the throat, and more commonly go undetected until they have progressed to the point of constituting an emergency. Therefore, it is of great importance that young people make use of oral cancer screenings, so cancers containing HPV DNA can be caught before they cause severe damage.
Dr. Christopher Emuedue operates Greenville Family Dentistry at 7215 I-30, Suite B, Greenville, Texas, 75402. To schedule an appointment, call 903-455-6701 or visit GreenvilleFamilyDentistryTX.com and fill out a contact sheet.
