Cancer of the mouth, diagnosis and treatment

¿What is mouth cancer and what the risk factors

Mouth cancer is one of the most common tumors of the head and neck, in fact when we talk about mouth cancer we are referring generally to squamous cell carcinoma, the cancer appears in the mucous membranes of the mouth, in the coating covers the entire oral cavity. The tongue, cheek, floor of the mouth, palate, gums, all of which are areas where this type of tumor may occur.

The more risk factors that are associated with cancer of the mouth are the snuff and alcohol especially if they are associated with each other. Other factors such as chronic and continuous irritation to the mucous membranes or some types of papillomavirus infection may also contribute to the occurrence of these injuries. A point and deserves the cancer of the lip, an injury that usually occurs on the lower lip and that apart from the factors mentioned above frequently relates to sun exposure and usually occurs in people who work in the outside.

¿What symptoms is diagnosed as

One factor that works in our favor in oral cancer is the ease of early diagnosis. The mouth is easy to explore and consequently to a specialist is easy to detect the appearance of a cancer. Symptoms that should make us suspicious of cancer in the mouth are basically the appearance of ulcers, erosions, ulcers, especially if they have some indurated edges and lasting more than 15 days. There are other symptoms, discoloration, white spots, red spots, changes in the texture of mucous a rougher texture, appearance of lumps and other symptoms such as difficulty swallowing, difficulty chewing, difficulty in articulating some words. These are all symptoms that can make us suspect the occurrence of oral cancer. Once your specialist has made medical history and exploration, on suspicion of a tumor, proceed to a biopsy is taken from a small sample of tissue to send to analyze. This procedure generally do under local anesthesia. Other than that we will test image, the more often we make often the MRI and in some cases may need to be more sophisticated tests such as PET -CT allows us to state with greater certainty the existence of a cancer in circumstances doubt.

Treatment and Surgery¿they consist

The treatment and prognosis of these lesions depends on the staging, which depends on lesion size, whether there is a regional extension to the neck nodes metastasis or if there are, the prognosis vary greatly in each of these cases. Generally, treatment is usually surgery and the surgery can vary a lot depending on their size stadium. They range from small to large resections local interventions in which microsurgical reconstructions require mouth and face. Right now we have computer tools that allow us to plan and do what we call surgical navigation, which allows us to obtain functional and aesthetically excellent results. Surgery is not the only treatment available to treat cancer, chemotherapy and radiotherapy are essential tools in many patients. Finally a message of hope, oral cancer has an excellent prognosis when treated early. An example, lip cancer is cured in over 95 % when in a stage 1. If you have a fear or suspicion of having an oral cancer do not doubt, consult us and leaving doubts.