Danbury Doc Offering Free Oral Cancer Screening

In honor of Oral Cancer Awareness Month, Dr James S. Tagliarini at Quality Dental of Danbury will be offering free oral cancer screenings on Tuesday, April 11, from 11 am to 2 pm by appointment.

Oral cancer is not a rare disease. Approximately 37,000 people will be diagnosed with oral cancer every year in the United States. It kills one person every hour of every day, and more than 100 new individuals will be diagnosed with it each day.

According to Dr Tagliarini, the good news is that it can often be found early in its development, through a simple, painless, and quick screening.

Who should get screened? Every adult — oral cancer can often be caught early, even as a precancer. With early detection, survival rates are high and the side effects are from treatment are at their lowest. Like other screenings, such as cervical, skin, prostate, colon and breast examinations, oral cancer screenings are an effective means of finding cancer at its early, highly curable stages., and should be part of one’s annual health check-ups.

There are two distinct pathways by which most people come to oral cancer: through the use of tobacco and alcohol, a long-term historic problem and cause, and through exposure to the HPV16 virus (human papilloma virus version 16), a newly identified etiology, and the same one that is responsible for the vast majority of cervical cancers in women.

The quickest growing segment of the oral cancer population are young, healthy, nonsmokers due to the connection to this virus.

Early Indicators:

Red and/or white discolorations of the soft tissues of the mouth.

Any sore that does not heal within 14 days.

Hoarseness that lasts for a prolonged period of time.

Advanced Indicators:

A sensation that something is stuck in your throat.

Numbness in the oral region.

Difficulty in moving the jaw or tongue.

Difficulty in swallowing.

Ear pain that occurs on one side only.

A sore under a denture, which even after adjustment of the denture, still does not heal.

A lump or thickening that develops in the mouth or on the neck.

To request an appointment for a complimentary screening, contact Quality Dental of Danbury at 203-743-2232 or log on to www.QualityDentalofDanbury.com.

For more information about oral cancer, visit the Oral Cancer Foundation’s official website at www.oralcancer.org.