In honor of Oral Cancer Awareness Month, the office of Dr. Sally Kashani DDS will be offering free oral cancer screenings for the entire month of April. Approximately 49,750 people will be diagnosed with oral cancer every year in the US. It kills one person every hour of every day, and approximately 132 new individuals will be diagnosed with it each day. The good news is that it can often be found early in its development, through a simple, painless, and quick screening.

People interested a receiving a free oral cancer screening will be required to schedule an appointment with Dr. Kashani’s office by calling (818) 508–7272. Dr. Kashani uses latest innovation in light-based fluorescence technology called the ViziLite® PRO which provides a fast and effective approach to detecting epithelial dysplasia, even in its earliest stages.

“This is a serious health condition that many Americans and people around the world deal with it,” said Dr. Kashani. “As a health professional, I want to support members of the community and help fight the battle through proper detection.”

Oral cancer can often be caught early, even as a pre-cancer. With early detection, survival rates are high and the side effects are from treatment are at their lowest. Like other screenings you engage in such as cervical, skin, prostate, colon and breast examinations, oral cancer screenings are an effective means of finding cancer at its early, highly curable stages. Make them part of your annual health check-ups.

There are two distinct pathways by which most people come to oral cancer. One is through the use of tobacco and alcohol, a long term historic problem and cause, and the other is through exposure to the HPV16 virus (human papilloma virus version 16), which is now the leading cause of oropharyngeal cancers in the US, and the same one, which is responsible for the vast majority of cervical cancers in women. The quickest growing segment of the oral cancer population are young, healthy, non-smokers due to the connection to this virus.

For more information about oral cancer, please log onto The Oral Cancer Foundation’s official website at www.oralcancer.org.