Taking care of your teeth by maintaining good oral hygiene, routine visits to your dentist and reading useful information on dental health at DrHornsbyDental and other dental websites may not only be saving your smile but also your dear life. Recent studies have shown that there is a possibility that a common form of gum disease may also lead to head and neck cancer. It was discovered that people with advanced gum disease(periodontitis) are often diagnosed with head and neck disease. This is because when you have periodontitis, there is a progressive loss of bones and the soft tissue surrounding the teeth and this was associated with a more than three times higher risk of cancer of the head and neck.
This has helped researchers come up with reasons as to why the rates of head and neck cancer are still high although the rate of smoking keeps on declining for the last 40 years.A research that was conducted and published in Cancer Epidemiology, Prevention and Biomarkers there was a comparison of rates of periodontitis in 226 persons with neck and head cancer and 207 people without it.
The outcome indicated that there was a greater than a fourfold higher risk of cancer of the neck and head in every millimeter of bone loss due to chronic periodontitis. People who had cancer of the mouth had the strongest link between the gum disease and cancer followed closely with cancer of the oropharynx.
Research, however, surprised many when it was discovered that the link between cancer of the neck and head and periodontitis in accordance to tobacco use was a bit weaker in those smoking currently as opposed to previous smokers and non-smokers.
In conclusion, we can say that cancer disease tends to increase when there’s a gum disease since even if there is a just a moderate gum disease, it contributes to an overall 14% risk of getting cancer and this includes kidney, lung and blood cancers in both Non-smokers and smokers.
