April is Oral Cancer Awareness Month, which is a good time to remind you that your mouth should be checked regularly for signs of this disease. Your preventive dental visits to our San Antonio, TX practice include an oral cancer exam. Your dentists are trained to recognize the signs, and we use VELscope®, a World Health Organization–recognized, award-winning technology that detects oral cancer in its earliest stages.

As with other types of cancer, early detection dramatically improves long-term survival rates. So in addition to visiting us every six months for a dental exam, it’s a good idea to learn to perform an oral cancer self-exam at home. It’s not difficult and only takes a few minutes. The video shows you how.

The video also discusses risk factors. While smoking and heavy alcohol use were and still are major risk factors for oral cancer, an increasing number of cases are being diagnosed in young people who have the HPV virus. 

Call Cosmetic Dental Associates today at 210-951-4444 to schedule an exam. You can also schedule online.

Learn to perform an oral cancer self-exam. from MyOMS.org on Vimeo.