Mouth Cancer

Mouth cancer or oral cancer is a serious disease. It includes cancer of the lip, tongue and mouth. Every year 4000 people get mouth cancer, of whom about 1700 people will die.

In the US alone, a person dies from oral cancer every hour of every day. If you add the sub category of laryngeal cancers, the rates of occurrence (about 10,000 additional new cases per year) and death are significantly higher. When found early, oral cancers have an 80 to 90 % cure rate. Unfortunately at this time, the majority are found as late stage cancers, and this accounts for the very high death rate.

Mouth Cancer is very common among people from Bangladesh, India, Sri-Lanka and Pakistan.

In 2001, there were 4,400 new cases of mouth cancer in the UK. This was more than the number of either cervical or testicular cancers. Around a third of cases are found in the mouth and just over a quarter are found on the tongue.

Fifty years ago, mouth cancer was five times more common in men than in women. Now it is only twice as common in men. The disease is more likely to develop in people over the age of 50, but is on the increase in younger adults, especially men.

Incidence
30,000 Americans will be diagnosed with oral or pharyngeal cancer this year. It will cause over 8,000 deaths, killing roughly 1 person per hour, 24 hours per day. Of those 30,000 newly diagnosed individuals, only half will be alive in 5 years. This is a number which has not significantly improved in decades. The death rate for oral cancer is higher than that of cervical cancer, Hodgkins disease, cancer of the brain, liver, testes, kidney, or skin cancer (malignant melanoma).

If you expand the definition of oral cancers to include cancer of the larynx, for which the risk factors are the same, the numbers of diagnosed cases grow to 41,000 individuals, and 12,500 deaths per year in the US alone.

Worldwide the problem is much greater, with over 350,000 to 400,000 new cases being found each year. The death rate associated with this cancer is particularly high due to the cancer being routinely discovered late in its development. Often it is only discovered when the cancer has metastasized to another location, most likely the lymph nodes of the neck. Prognosis at this stage of discovery is significantly worse than when it is caught in a localized area. Besides the metastasis, at these later stages, the primary tumor has had time to invade deep into local structures.

Oral cancer is particularly dangerous because it has a high risk of producing second, primary tumors. This means that patients who survive a first encounter with the disease, have up to a 20 times higher risk of developing a second cancer. This heightened risk factor can last for 5 to 10 years after the first occurrence. There are several types of oral cancers, but 90% are squamous cell carcinomas. Less common and rare forms of oral cancers exsist including oral Malignant Melanoma, Mucoepidermoid Carcinoma, Adenoid Cystic Carcinoma.

Age, Gender, Race and Ethnicity
The demographics of those who develop this cancer have been consistent for some time. While the majority of people are over the age of 40 at the time of discovery, it does occur in those under this age.

Exact causes for those affected at a younger age are now becoming clearer in peer reviewed research. There are links to young men and women who use "smokeless" chewing or spit tobacco. Promoted as a safer alternative to smoking, it has in actuality not proven to be any safer to those who use it when referring to oral cancers.

Tobacco companies have started campaigns to promote the safety of smokless, but it is clear that while it may reduce lung cancers, it has a negative effect on the rates of oral cancers, periodontal disease, and the chronic infections that it produces may even link it to heart disease as well.

The gains against lung cancers likely will be offset by losses in other areas. It is also possible that those in this younger age group have a causal link which is viral based, since the amount of time they have been exposed to other known causative agents such as tobacco is short.

The human papilloma virus, particularly versions 16 and 18, has now been shown to be sexually transmitted between partners, and is implicated in the increasing incidence of young non-smoking oral cancer patients. This is the same virus that is the causative agent in more than 90% of all cervical cancers. From a gender perspective, for decades this has been a cancer which affected 6 men for every woman. That ratio has now become 2 men to each woman. Again, while published studies do not exist to draw finite conclusions, we will probably find that this increase is due to lifestyle changes, primarily the increased number of women smokers over the last few decades. It is a cancer which occurs twice as often in the black population as in whites, and survival statistics for blacks over five years are also poorer at 33%, versus 55% for whites. As in the above examples, it is unlikely we will find a genetic reason for this.

Lifestyle choices still remain the biggest cause. These published statistics do not consider such socio-economic factors as income levels, education, availability of proper health care, and the increased use of both tobacco and alcohol by different ethnic populations.

Statistics Of Oral Cancer In Singapore