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Knowledge of Oral Cancer Amongst Dental Patients Attending Public Clinics in South East Queensland, Australia

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Abstract

Patient knowledge of risk factors, signs and symptoms associated with oral cancers is crucial for increasing the likelihood of patient presentation for opportunistic screening and reducing delay in patient appraisal for early detection. This study aimed to assess the knowledge of oral cancer and to ascertain socio-demographic factors that influence knowledge amongst adult dental patients attending public clinics in Brisbane, Australia. A convenience sample of 213 adult dental patients who attended the Herston and Stafford public health clinics in Brisbane, Australia, between July and August 2019 participated in the self-administered questionnaire. Multivariate analyses were performed to identify predictors for oral cancer knowledge. Patients were well informed of smoking as a risk factor (n = 135; 84.4%), whereas only 53.8% (n = 82) of participants agreed that heavy alcohol consumption was a risk factor. A larger proportion of participants identified difficulty of moving the tongue (n = 79; 49.4%) and pain on swallowing (n = 72; 45.0%) compared to the proportion who identified fixed red patches (n = 61; 38.1%) and fixed white patches (n = 57; 35.6%) as a sign or symptom. Education level and gender were significant knowledge predictors for alcohol (p = 0.01), old age (p = 0.008) and family history (p = 0.004) as a risk factors for oral cancer. Those with a family history of cancer were more likely to identify a red patch (p = 0.02), bleeding gums (p = 0.001) and altered sensation (p = 0.023) as a sign or symptom of oral cancer. Overall, patient knowledge was greater for risk factors than for signs and symptoms for oral cancer. Symptoms associated with later stages of cancer were recognised by a greater proportion of patients compared to early stages of oral cancer. These results indicate the need for targeted public health initiatives to improve patient knowledge.

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Data Availability

All data generated and analysed during this study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Dentistry, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia

    Li-chen Yang, Alan Yang, Lin Na Chen, Norman Firth, Soorebettu Ramananda Prabhu & Jessica Zachar

Authors
  1. Li-chen Yang
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  2. Alan Yang
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  3. Lin Na Chen
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  4. Norman Firth
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  5. Soorebettu Ramananda Prabhu
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  6. Jessica Zachar
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Contributions

All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Data acquisition, analysis and interpretation were performed by [Author 1], [Author 2] and [Author 3]. All authors contributed to the final version of the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Li-chen Yang.

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The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Ethics Approval

Ethical approval was obtained from the Metro North Hospital and Health Services Human Research Ethics Committee (Approval No. 50157) and was performed in line with the principles of the Declaration of Helsinki.

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Written informed consent was obtained from all participants included in the study.

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Written informed consent regarding the inclusion of their de-identified data was obtained from all participants included in the study.

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Yang, Lc., Yang, A., Chen, L.N. et al. Knowledge of Oral Cancer Amongst Dental Patients Attending Public Clinics in South East Queensland, Australia. J Canc Educ 37, 924–931 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13187-020-01901-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13187-020-01901-3

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