Description
Dental professionals, making assumptions about the two distinct pathways of oral cancer, often forgo comprehensive oral cancer screenings, which affects patients’ prognoses and creates malpractice liability. Absent comprehensive screenings, HPV-related oral cancer is diagnosed late-stage, when morbidity is highest. To curb late diagnosis, we must heed current research. HPV-related oral cancer, which is rapidly on the rise, is different in its clinical presentation from tobacco/alcohol-related oral cancer. Thus, we cannot rely on what we learned in dental school, risk profiling, or traditional tools to screen for HPV-related oral cancer. We must change our approach, by implementing comprehensive screenings that incorporate extraoral/intraoral tactile screenings, visual screenings of all tissues, and asking appropriate, revealing questions.