Oral cancer is often called the “forgotten disease”. It kills more people each year than testicular cancer, cervical cancer or brain cancer, yet gets little attention. Each year over 30,000 Americans develop oral cancer, and only 57% of them will live more than five years without treatment.
Many people think that avoiding tobacco and alcohol means oral cancer won’t affect them. Those habits do contribute, but 25% of people diagnosed use neither.
The best protection is an annual oral cancer screening. The FDA-approved VELscope® gives your dentist another tool to find oral cancer at its earliest stage. It’s a blue light that highlights precancerous and cancerous changes.
How VELscope® works
VELscope® uses fluorescence visualization: a bright blue light shone into the mouth shows changes and lesions that would otherwise be invisible. That matters because early oral cancer can look a lot like less serious problems. Healthy tissue absorbs the light and shows up green, and problem areas appear much darker.
Benefits
- Quick, painless exam
- FDA-approved
- Finds problem areas invisible under normal light
- Detects lesions and white and red patches
- Exposes precancerous and cancerous tissue
- Helps catch oral cancer at its earliest, most treatable stage
- Helps confirm diseased tissue has been completely removed
- Can be combined with digital photography
What the exam is like
The VELscope® exam takes only two or three minutes and is painless and non-invasive.
- Your dentist does a regular visual exam of your lower face, including glands, tongue, cheeks, palate and teeth.
- You wear special glasses to protect your eyes, and the room lights are dimmed.
- The blue light is used to check your mouth. Signs of oral cancer stand out because they look much darker.
- If anything is found, a biopsy may be taken to decide on the best next step. Otherwise, you’ll have your next screening in a year.