China 
Africa 
Explore chapters and articles related to this topic
The Use of Machine Learning in Screening for Oral Cancer
Published in Raouf N.G. Naguib, Gajanan V. Sherbet, Artificial Neural Networks in Cancer Diagnosis, Prognosis, and Patient Management, 2001
Oral cancer is most often seen as a persistent ulcer with raised edges and a firm indurated base. Typically the lesion is painless, but patients usually state that the lesion has been present for some time, often months. At this stage, the lesion presents little diagnostic challenge to the experienced clinician; however, these ulcerated lesions are probably late in the natural history of the disease and at time of diagnosis the prognosis is already poor with over 60% of patients having loco-regional lymph node metastases [3]. A major goal for the prevention of mortality and morbidity is early detection of oral cancers and of potentially malignant lesions. Early lesions of oral cancer are often subtle and may easily be missed both by patients and clinicians. Most often, small lesions present as red patches (erythroplakia) or as speckled red and white lesions (speckled or nonhomogeneous leukoplakia). Although typical of early cancer, such appearances may also be seen as a result of other, nonmalignant, oral diseases. These lesions are often therefore dismissed as trivial and ignored. Precancerous lesions are usually white patches on the oral mucosa (leukoplakia), but other conditions may result in a similar appearance and white patches overall may be quite common. The problem for dentists and other clinicians is to decide which white patches are significant and which are due to simple causes such as frictional trauma. True leukoplakias which are regarded as potentially malignant are rare in the general population and of these, only about 5% overall may progress to malignant disease.
Understanding the complex microenvironment in oral cancer: the contribution of the Faculty of Dentistry, University of Otago over the last 100 years
Published in Journal of the Royal Society of New Zealand, 2020
Alison Mary Rich, Haizal Mohd Hussaini, Benedict Seo, Rosnah Bt Zain
The Faculty of Dentistry, University of Otago was founded in 1907 and this consolidated the practice of dentistry in New Zealand to the appropriately trained and qualified professionals rather than barbers, pharmacists, blacksmiths or doctors. During this period, dentistry was very much focused on the practical aspect of caries removal and mechanics of tooth replacement. Even so, oral cancer was already being recognised as one of the major ailments in dentistry. Henry Pickerill, the first Dean of the Faculty, defined OSCC as ‘Epithelioma’ in Chapter XIII of his book ‘Stomatology in Dental Practice’. He went on further to elaborate that ‘a malignancy of squamous-celled variety commonly arises from the oral mucous membrane originating from Leukoplakia, and smoking is said to be the cause’ (Pickerill 1912). The terminology of carcinoma was later used in Val MacDonald’s paper in the New Zealand Dental Journal (NZDJ) which described two cases of Leukoplakia transforming into carcinoma (MacDonald 1924). In 1946, Frank Schroff established the nation’s first oral pathology diagnostic service at the Faculty of Dentistry, University of Otago. As diagnostic cases accumulated, he started to describe multiple cases of OSCC encountered in New Zealand in several articles complete with histological photomicrographs (Schroff 1954).