Oral Health and Dental Management

An optical tool for the detection of oral cancer – Reality or gimmick

4^th Asia Pacific Congress & Expo on Dental and Oral Health

July 27-29, 2015 Brisbane, Australia

Kamran Habib Awan

Posters-Accepted Abstracts: Oral Health Dent Manag

Abstract:

Early-stage oral cancers and oral potentially malignant disorders cannot be adequately identified by visual inspection alone and easily may be overlooked and neglected, even by highly trained professionals with broad experience. Furthermore, surgical biopsy followed by histopathological assessment (gold standard) suffers from both inter-observer and intra-observer variability. Thus, methods of detection at early, curable stages are crucial and if effective tools are available this may lead to a reduction in the current unacceptably high oral cancer morbidity and mortality rates. Therefore, there is need of newer diagnostic aids which can distinguish between various lesions reliably and non-invasively, have the ability to accurately identify biopsy site and also detect premalignant changes in the earliest stage.In the past decades, a number of adjunctive techniques have emerged with claims by the manufacturers of enhancing oral mucosal examinations and facilitating the detection of, and distinction between oral benign and oral potentially malignant and malignant disorders. Clinicians who use these techniques may be unaware of the state of the evidence supporting their effectiveness.