Covid 19 and oral cancer
Oral cancer is considered as the most common cancers, and is a major health problem particularly in developing countries.Dentists play an important role in the early detection of oral cancer. Through
opportunistic screening when a patient presents in a dental practice for routine care &
by rapid referral of suspicious lesions. Owing to the transmission of COVID-19 through droplets and aerosols, which are inherent features of dental practice. Most of the countries followed a strategy of suspension of all elective dental care services and reserving dental care only for emergency cases.
Therefore, opportunities for screening the oral cavity might be significantly disrupted.
Consequently, diagnosis of malignant and/or potentially malignant lesions might be delayed.
Which inevitably leads to a missed diagnosis of oral cancer or, at best, diagnosis later on but at a late stage. It is understandable that the current unmatched pandemic has drawn the attention of the whole world to the control of coronavirus disease
Oral health professionals should come up with some alternative approaches to increase public awareness on early symptoms of oral cancer. New approaches are needed for continuing care for these special groups of patients, often neglected during emergency closure of clinics. Telemedicine for educating, interviewing and examining the patients is one of these approachesThere are a too many applicationsand/or social media that can be used for this purpose including zoom,messenger, and Facebook.Dental practitioners/oral medicine specialists can arrange to follow up, interview, do clinical examination, and even to conduct oral habits cessation counseling for their patients. For their part, the patients can take various photographs of their mouths and send them to the dentists at regular Intervals.