Oral Cancer
Rehabilitation of oncology patients with hard palate defects part 2: principles of obturator design
Defects have been successfully managed with obturators (Latin: ‘obturare’ meaning ‘to block up’) for many years. Ambroise Pare was probably the first...
Mouth cancer for clinicians part 3: risk factors (traditional: tobacco)
The cause of cancer in most people is unclear but risk depends on a combination of genes, environment and aspects of living (Figure 2)..
The francis report – implications for oral care of the elderly
The vast report is but words on a page until a personal connection can be made to the events it describes. The transcripts describe real people who...
Rehabilitation of oncology patients with hard palate defects part 1: the surgical planning phase
The number of individuals undertaking surgical reconstructions has increased from 38% to 91% from 1995 to 2009,4 with the use of microvascular free...
Mouth cancer for clinicians part 2: epidemiology
Oral and oropharyngeal cancers together are the sixth leading cancer in the world, with a wide geographical variation, although two-thirds of the...
Mouth cancer for clinicians part 1: cancer
The word tumour in Latin means a swelling but a tumour or swelling is not always a cancer. Some tumours may be caused by inflammation, infections,...
Embracing an evidence-based toolkit for prevention – personal accounts
The Toolkit was introduced through the Dental Public Health course in my final year of dental school (2007/08), shortly after it was first published....
Electronic cigarettes: harm reduction or another addiction?; the dental perspective
The first record of e-cigarettes was in 1965 when a US patent was filed by Herbert Gilbert (US Patent Office # 3200819).4 The recent explosion in...
Localized gingival overgrowths – differential diagnosis for dental practitioners
Occurrence of a LGO can indicate many conditions, both local and systemic, ranging from regular hyperplastic reactive lesions1 to atypical metastatic...
An introduction to health literacy and oral health: the importance of awareness amongst dental care professionals
Health literacy can be defined as ‘the degree to which individuals have the capacity to obtain, process and understand basic health information and...
‘hubble-bubble leads to trouble’ – waterpipe smoking and oral health
Although there are various types of waterpipes, differing in size, shape and colour, the typical layout is shown in Figure 1. The tobacco bowl is...
Computerized tomography, stereolithography and dental implants in the rehabilitation of oral cancer patients
Recent advances in CT have seen the development of Cone Beam CT (CBCT) scanners. These are increasingly being used in imaging of the head and neck to...
Special care dentistry for general dental practice
As set out in GDC guidelines, there are three main principles4 which are essential in order to gain valid consent from a patient:.