TLA = Three Letter Acronyms
This week's TLA is OCS
OCS = Oral Cancer Screening
Here's the bottom line:
Your HomeWork this week is to make a regular 6-month check-up appointment
with a dentist (hopefully your current dentist) who will do a very quick and
very easy Oral Cancer Screening.
If you have a regular 6 month check-up coming soon, then call to make sure
that they are going to incorporate this into your regular appointment.
If you are due to make an appointment, then call and make it now and be sure
to specify that you want to make sure you are screened for Oral Cancer.
An Oral Cancer Screening should be a part of your normal 6-month check-up
anyway!!!
The dentist will probably either have a Velscope or and Identafi 3000. They
may have another machine/technique, and that is fine. As long as they
screen you!
If your dentist is not equipped to do this very simple screening find a
new dentist - period.
Here's the why:
(taken directly form the Oral Cancer Foundation website -
http://oralcancerfoundation.org/facts/index.htm)
Oral and Pharyngeal cancer kill roughly 1 person every hour 24 hours per
day.
Need more convincing?
Know why the death rate is so high?
Because it is routinely discovered late in it development. Often discovered
only after the cancer has spread (metastasized) to another area of the body.
A true story:
A teenage girl was seen by her dentist and the dentist noticed something
Œirregular¹ but let it go because this was a young healthy patient.
At a follow up 1 year later the teenage girl was referred to an oncologist
for oral cancer.
If a young healthy teenage girl can get oral cancer, so can you. Don¹t mess
around.
Getting screened with a Velscope or Identafi literally takes less than 5
minutes, and is part of a regular check-up.
Hmmmm 5 minutes vs. death....
Seems like an easy call to me.
Stay tuned for next week's TLA:
CrP
Have a great week,
MRoss
