WARRINGTON Hospital hosted a drop-in mouth cancer screenings session last week.

Around 75 residents visited the hospital to get checked out as part of Mouth Cancer Awareness Month.

Steve Porter, hospital practitioner in oral surgery at Warrington Hospital, carried out many of the screenings and underlined that any mouth problems should be dealt with by dentists.

He said: “It’s now the 10th most common cancer in men which is quite frightening really because a lot of patients haven’t really been aware of mouth cancer as a potential issue – they go to the dentist and dentists often don’t particularly talk about it either.

“I work in general practice as well and we always mention that as well as looking at the patients teeth we’re also looking at the all the soft tissue in the mouth.

“One of the big problems is that people just associate the dentist with looking at their teeth so they’ll go to the doctor if it’s surrounding the mouth but not related to the teeth.

“They’re unaware that we’re examining all these other areas as well so it’s something that in our practice we’re pushing – it’s just trying to make patients aware that these things are there and there are potential problems that can arise.

Cases of mouth cancer are on the up, with 6,767 diagnoses resulting in 1,800 deaths in the UK last year.

Risk factors include smoking, excessive alcohol consumption and also oral sex.

Steve added: “There were nearly 7,000 cases diagnosed last year – it’s increased by 40 per cent over the last 20 years.

“There are probably several different factors why this has happened – smoking obviously has gone down but alcohol consumption has gone up.

“Diagnosis and identification of it and finding it earlier is potentially one of the reasons why because it can be diagnosed quite late on when symptoms are severe.

“The more people that go to the dentist the more chances there are of picking it up at an earlier stage.

“An early diagnosis is key – there is a 90 per cent survival rate with an early diagnosis but 50 per cent with a late diagnosis so potentially everyone one in two patients who are diagnosed late die from it.

“The surgery can be quite drastic and it’s a key area – your mouth is a very important part of your body for speech, eating, drinking and appearance.”