My father is 45 years old and when he was diagnosed with oral cancer, it was in the third stage. There was just a wound on the inside of his cheek which suddenly started growing rapidly in a few months. Currently, treatment is going on, chemotherapy is being done, can it be cured? Can they live a long life?
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Let us answer this question of the patient with the top oncologists of the country. Dr. Shyam Aggarwal, Chairman, Department of Medical Oncology, Sir Ganga Ram Hospital and Dr. Sultan A Pradhan, Surgical Oncologist, Head and Neck Cancer Institute of India. Know the answer from.
Dr. Shyam Aggarwal says that oral cancer is not a rare disease in India. About one-third of the total cancer cases in the country are oral cancer. This is a hidden public health problem. Oral testing can be done easily, yet 70–80 percent of cases in the country are detected when the disease has advanced significantly. That means either in Stage 3 or Stage 4.
In such a situation, the patient’s chances of survival for five years are less than 30 percent. Whereas if the disease is caught in the initial first or second stage, then more than 80 percent of the patients can be cured.
Dr. Shyam further says that in most of the cases it is seen that even after the symptoms appear, people do not reach the specialist hospital for treatment for 3 to 7 months. In the beginning, mouth sores are small and painless, so people ignore them. For this reason, a disease that can be cured by treatment takes a serious form.
Whereas Dr. Sultan A. Pradhan says that screening programs have proved to be very beneficial. Regular screening can reduce the number of deaths by 24–30 percent because the disease is caught before it develops into cancer. Mobile testing units and camps have also helped in identifying early symptoms in people.
More than 90 percent of oral cancer cases in India are linked to tobacco consumption, especially smokeless tobacco like gutkha, khaini and betel nut. Drinking alcohol further increases the risk. Now HPV infection is also becoming a cause of concern among the youth, especially among those who do not take tobacco.
Oral cancer is the most common cancer in men and is also included in the top five cancers in women. However, oral cancer can be prevented, caught early and completely cured in its early stages. The real loss lies not in the cost of treatment, but in the delay in treatment.
This new technology has arrived
Dr. Shyam Aggarwal says that new technology is now coming in the treatment of cancer. Treatment will be decided by deep sequencing of DNA. Now even tumors smaller than 5 mm can be identified. In future, patients will be asked whether their ctDNA test is negative or not. He said that Indian labs and researchers should also adopt this technology, because it is becoming common in other countries.
