Healthy Smiles Family Dental

This April is Oral Cancer Awareness Month. At Healthy Smiles Family Dental, located in Salem, OR, Drs. Na Xu and Mark Thomas want to help keep your mouth healthy and happy. That’s why besides coming in for your bi-annual visits, we encourage you to be proactive about your oral health. Prevention is the key to a healthy and long life. If you have any strange anomalies in your mouth, don’t wait to make an appointment.   If anything new or strange appears in your mouth, and it doesn’t go away after 2-3 weeks, make an appointment. This is often an indicator of something more serious going on. Even more so if this problem is reoccurring. Be on the lookout for these symptoms:   Sores that take over 14 days to heal, strange coloring of the soft tissue, abnormalities that bleed easily, bumps or hard spots in the mouth, and a lump on the outside of the neck that has been there for at least two weeks.   When it comes to HPV-caused oropharyngeal cancer, symptoms may vary. In this case, a patient ...

Oral cancer is a malignant growth that affects any part of the oral cavity, including the lips, upper or lower jaw, tongue, gums, cheeks, and throat. Understanding the causative factors of cancer will contribute to the prevention of the disease. Your health is important to us and you should schedule regular dental checkups with our staff at Healthy Smiles Family Dental to detect oral cancer early when it is the easiest to treat. If you are a frequent smoker or drink alcohol in copious amounts, you increase your risk of developing oral cancer. Oral cancer screenings are sometimes performed during an oral exam as a preventive measure. If our doctor discovers something out of the ordinary, it could lead to additional testing to determine what the cause is. Oral cancer screenings don’t require any special preparation, and it’s important to understand that just because our doctor may suggest an oral cancer screening, it doesn’t mean you have cancer. If you have questions or concerns regardi...