CDA Essentials 2016 • Volume 3 • Issue 8

37 Volume 3 Issue 7 | S upporting Y our P ractice Do you have any burning clinical questions related to your everyday practice? Are you facing a challenging clinical case and need advice? Send your queries to Oasis Discussions for expert guidance. The following question was submitted to Oasis Discussions by a general dentist. Drs. NitaMazurat and SuhamAlexander provided a response. Question Response Does anyone have a polite and professional way to address the HPV issue with patients in a dental office setting? Oasis Discussions Ask Your Colleagues The role of dentists in the prevention of human papillomavirus (HPV)-associated oral cancers ❙➤ Provide a head and neck examination. ❙➤ Encourage patients to perform regular self-examinations. ❙➤ Encourage adult patients and parents of appropriately aged children to get the HPV vaccine. ❙➤ Refer patients with suspicious lesions or persistent symptoms. Evaluate the patient’s health history—particularly any verbal or written indication of suggestive symptoms, such as sore throat, dysphagia, hoarseness, ear pain, enlarged lymph nodes or weight loss—as part of the full clinical assessment and head and neck examination. 1,2 Educate and explain  Open the conversation with a discussion about risk: all men and women are at risk of developing oral cancer even in the absence of other risk factors, such as alcohol, smoking or smokeless tobacco use.  Explain that the dental examination includes extraoral and intraoral soft tissue and that you perform a head and neck examination for all new patients and at every recare/recall appointment. Practitioners should keep in mind that oropharyngeal cancers are difficult to detect manually and visually because of their position in the ororfacial complex and because the symptoms mimic more common benign conditions. 2  During the examination, explain that oral cancer screening includes an assessment of the lymph nodes of the neck, intraoral mucosal tissues, tongue, base of the tongue, and throat. Encourage patients to perform a self- examination at least once a month.  Segue into a discussion about the relationship between HPV and oral cancers. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) website ( cdc.gov/std/hpv/stdfact-hpv.htm ) has a good fact sheet that includes these key points: HPV is the most common sexually transmitted infection and can be transmitted through vaginal, anal, or oral sex with someone who has the virus. Anyone who is sexually active can get HPV, even if you have had sex with only one person. It is so common that nearly all sexually active men and women get it at some point