"Glow Stick" Test Detects Oral Cancer Quickly and Easily

Tuesday, 22 April 2008 14:38

Oral cancer is the sixth most common cancer worldwide and now your dentist can detect it quickly and easily in your mouth.

Oral cancer is far too often discovered in late stage development, the primary reason for the consistently high death rate. Oral cancer treatment often results in disfiguring effects on patients, and can seriously compromise their quality of life. Early detection and diagnosis can make a tremendous difference in life expectancy; oral cancer is 90% curable when found in its early stages. Unfortunately, 70% of oral cancers are diagnosed in the late stages, III and IV, leading to a five-year survival rate of 57%.

Dr. Tracey Smith of Whittaker Road Dental in Ypsilanti Township cautioned everyone is potentially at risk. "The highest risk patient is the one that smokes and drinks and is over the age of 40," said Smith, "but there is 25 percent of the population who doesn't have any of the risk factors that can still get oral cancer."

Experts reported only half of those patients diagnosed with oral cancer survive five years, and those who do survive may face significant problems."People lose jaws, they lose half their tongues. It can be very hard to live a good lifestyle, if they do have oral cancer," said Smith.

Doctors hope a new test will help detect oral cancer before it reaches an advanced stage.The test is called Vizilite. ViziLite Plus with TBlueTM is an oral lesion identification and marking system that is used as an adjunct to the conventional head and neck examination. It is comprised of a chemiluminescent light source (ViziLite) to improve the identification of lesions and a blue phenothiazine dye to mark those lesions identified by ViziLite. ViziLitePlus with TBlueTM is designed to be used in a patient population at increased risk for oral cancer.

First, the patient rinses with a special mouthwash that tastes like vinegar(dilute acetic acid solution). The dentist then uses a special glow stick to carefully examine the patient's mouth and tongue. Any abnormal tissue will appear white.LumenoscopyTM has demonstrated in numerous studies to improve the ability to visualize mucosal lesions and initially identify clinically suspicious lesions.

If the dentist sees a suspicious spot, it can be tested further with a blue dye called TBlueTM which is a patented, pharmaceutical-grade toluidine blue-based metachromatic dye. It is used to further evaluate and closely monitor changes in ViziLite-identified lesions. It has been proposed that living cells will differentially accumulate toluidine blue based on parameters related to metabolic activity. TBlueTM , packaged in an easy to use 3-swab system, provides the deep blue staining that allows ViziLite-identified lesions to be seen clearly under normal light.

"If it stays blue, then that's usually a pretty good indication that it is oral cancer, and we move it to the oral surgeon right away so they can do a biopsy," explained Smith.

The Vizilite test costs about $70 US