Dentists team up with health professionals to raise awareness of mouth cancer

Two of BDA Northern Ireland's Dental Practice Committee members, Eamonn Toner and Derek Manson, volunteered their time to carry out mouth checks on shoppers at the Park Centre, West Belfast, as part of our #mouthcheckni initiative. West Belfast is the most deprived constituency in Northern Ireland, where the average number of cases per year of lip oral cavity and pharynx cancers are higher than the average for Northern Ireland.

Around 200 people in Northern Ireland are diagnosed with mouth cancer each year, often at a late stage, with about a third of those diagnosed dying from the disease. Shockingly, the incidence of oral cancers looks set to double by 2035.

Peter Crooks, chair of the BDA Northern Ireland Dental Practice Committee says that in relation to oral cancer, visiting your dentist regularly could quite simply be lifesaving, “Dentists can play an important role in detecting unusual changes in the mouth, lips, head and neck. Through our oral health check initiative, a partnership between Cancer Focus NI, BDA and the Health and Social Care Board, we hope to educate the public on the risk factors, and signs and symptoms of oral cancer, and ultimately achieve better health outcomes.”