Oral cancer detection by dentists on the rise

Magalhaes, lead author of the study that appears in the Journal of the American Dental Association, is an assistant professor at the University of Toronto's Faculty of Dentistry, and one of the oral pathologists at the Toronto Oral Pathology Service (TOPS). Operated by the Faculty of Dentistry, TOPS is one of the largest oral pathology services in Canada, which provides comprehensive evaluation of biopsy specimens -- the overwhelming majority of which are submitted by dentists.

For the study, Magalhaes looked at 63,483 biopsies submitted to the service between 2005 and 2015. "We wanted to look at the scope of oral biopsies performed by dentists, what they're seeing in practice," says Magalhaes of the study's design. The biopsy data from TOPS were then compared to numbers collected by the Ontario Cancer registry, Cancer Care Ontario, which tracks all reported cancers in the province.