Editorial
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2015. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Stomatol. Aug 20, 2015; 4(3): 115-120
Published online Aug 20, 2015. doi: 10.5321/wjs.v4.i3.115
Diagnostic aids in detection of oral cancer: An update
Gaurav Sharma
Gaurav Sharma, Department of Oral Medicine and Diagnosis, Sudha Rustagi College of Dental Sciences and Research, Faridabad-121002, Haryana, India
Author contributions: Sharma G contributed to the manuscript wholly.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The author declared that he has no conflict of interest.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Gaurav Sharma, MDS, Reader, Department of Oral Medicine and Diagnosis, Sudha Rustagi College of Dental Sciences and Research, Kheri more, Bhopani, Faridabad-121002, Haryana, India. drgaurav7479@rediffmail.com
Telephone: +91-129-4230000 Fax: +91-129-4230010
Received: January 27, 2015
Peer-review started: January 27, 2015
First decision: April 10, 2015
Revised: May 10, 2015
Accepted: August 16, 2015
Article in press: August 17, 2015
Published online: August 20, 2015
Processing time: 206 Days and 18.9 Hours
Abstract

Oral cancer is the sixth most common malignancy with almost 500000 new cases reported worldwide annually. The diagnosis of oral cancer at an early stage has a good prognosis as the survival rate is high (around 80%). However, the majority of oral cancer cases are diagnosed at a later stage with a considerably poor 5-year survival rate of 50% according to World Health Organization statistics. Thus, an effective management strategy for oral cancer will depend on its early identification and intervention which would pave the way for superior prognosis. Despite the obvious advantage of earlier diagnosis of oral cancer, no approach has yet proven to be a reliably successful in diagnosis of oral cancer at an early stage. Currently; the primary line of screening of oral cancer is performed by visual inspection, which is a subjective examination. Among the screening tests or diagnostic aids now available for oral cancer, few (toluidine blue, brush biopsy, salivary and serum bio-markers) have been utilised and studied for many years while others have recently become commercially available. The authors in the present article review all the modalities of screening aids used in oral cancer detection and provide an update on the latest screening tools used in oral cancer detection.

Keywords: Oral cancer; Diagnostic aids; Brush biopsy; Tissue fluorescence

Core tip: The overall 5-year survival rates for oral cancer have remained low (50%) for the past decades and are considered among the worst of all cancer death rates. Despite the obvious advantage of earlier diagnosis of oral cancer, no approach has yet proven to be a reliably successful in diagnosis of oral cancer at an early stage. Currently, the primary line of screening of oral cancer is performed by subjective visual inspection. Recent advancements in oral cancer research have led to the development of potentially useful diagnostic tools at the clinical and molecular level for early detection of oral cancer.