What is Mouth Cancer and what are the statistics?
Cancer can occur in any part of the mouth, tongue, lips, throat, salivary glands, pharynx, larynx, sinus, and other sites located in the head and neck area. These “Mouth Cancers” have a higher proportion of deaths per number of cases than breast cancer, cervical cancer or skin melanoma. In the UK, there were 7,697 new cases in 2004. The mortality rate is just over 50%, despite treatment, with 2,718 deaths occurring in 2005. Mouth Cancer kills one person every 3 hours in the UK because of late detection. An increasing number of young people are being affected and 25% of the cases have no associated significant risk factors.
