Mouth Cancer Awareness Day 2013 - the Swords Orthodontics Experience

Well, we were delighted at the response for our free mouth cancer screening here at Swords Orthodontics. Like hundreds of dentists around the country, as part of the National Mouth Cancer Awareness Day, we offered free examinations specifically to look out for this disease and we had even more people attending than last year - not just from Swords, but Balbriggan, Skerries, Malahide, Lusk and other areas.

I used to work in some very busy oral surgery units and was involved in various stages of mouth cancer diagnosis and treatment, so the day brought back many memories. I am happy to report that all our visitors for mouth cancer awareness day were all healthy on examination, even though I can understand why some of them had reasons to be concerned. 

This was the third year that this initiative has been run, and overall, it resulted in over 20,000 people being screened around the country and about 2 dozen mouth cancers were detected that would otherwise have progressed further without treatment.

Although the special day set aside for mouth cancer screening won't be back for another year, the potential for the disease doesn't go away - there will probably be another 300 cases diagnosed before we run this event again. To reduce your chance of becoming one of them, talk to your dentist about what you can do.