The goal of this project is to document the activity of dental practices within the Greater Vancouver Regional District (GVRD) using Spatial Information and Geovisualization to provide a snapshot of screening activity in different communities. This involves data linkages to the locations of dental offices, their relationship to submitted oral biopsies, and their associated correlation to Socio-economic Status (SES) in various regions defined by Statistics Canada dissemination areas.
Project Background
Oral Cancer
Oral Cancer is the uncontrollable growth of cells that invade and cause damage to surrounding tissue. It occurs within the mouth cavity including in areas such as: the lips, tongue, cheek, floor of the mouth, the hard and soft palate, sinuses, and pharynx (throat).
Risk Factors
There is no single cause of oral cancer, but two most important risk factors include alcohol and tobacco. Risk factors of oral cancer are as follows:
Cancer Screening
Dental health professionals play a major role in this early detection, since survival rate is much higher when the lesion is diagnosed at early stage. The 5-year survival rate for tongue cancer is 71% for stage 1 disease and 37% for late stage disease consumption. As there are more than 40% of oral cancers are diagnosed at late-stage, it is recommended that dentist and other health professionals to perform an annual oral cancer examination on their patients.
The Oral Cancer Prevention Program in British Columbia will be launching a province wide campaign to increase awareness of this disease, and to mobilize health professionals to become more actively engaged in early detection of oral cancers.
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank Jade Lavallee for her generous help in supplying and securing the valuable data that was required for this project, as well as the rest of her team at the Cancer Research Facility for their insights. A special thanks to Michael Martin and Dr. Nadine Schuurman for their guidance throughout this project. We would also like to thank Aric Cheung for his contribution in photography and Vancouver General Hospital for providing us the opportunity for photographing their lab.
