New Cancer Screening
GREAT NEWS! As your partner in your oral health, we are always trying to stay on top of the newest and the best dental resources we can provide you to keep you on your path to optimal health. Starting March 21, we will be providing VELscope Cancer Screenings to all of our adult patients. This will be done instead of the Vizalite Cancer Screenings..so no more funky rinse! Yes, Vizalite is a great adjunctive tool in early detection, but we have found it to be too expensive ($75), poor tasting, and not as effective as what is available to us now. VELscope, is FDA approved and at this time it is the leading adjunctive tool in early cancer detection. We think this product is absolutely amazing and we are excited to be able to offer it to you. We are also happy to announce that the cost for the VELscope is $25, which is a fraction of what we had to charge for Vizalite. Please read the following information about this product so you know what it is we are doing at your next visit.
VELscope
Mortality rates associated with oral cancer have remained unchanged for over 30 years, partly due to the limitations of white light examination of the oral mucosa. This has created a dire need for an improved oral mucosal screening procedure that would make it possible for clinicians to accurately identify tissue changes at and below the surface before they become apparent under white light examination.
In response to such a need, the Vancouver-based company LED Medical Diagnostics Inc. (LED-MD) has developed the VELscope System. It is a technology platform based on the direct visualization of human tissue fluorescence and the changes in fluorescence that occur when abnormal tissue is present.
The VELscope®System Handpiece emits a safe blue light into the oral cavity, which excites the tissue from the surface of the epithelium through to the basement membrane and into the stroma beneath, causing it to fluoresce. We are then able to immediately view the different fluorescence responses to help differentiate between normal and abnormal tissue. In fact, the VELscope®System is the only adjunctive device cleared by the FDA and Health Canada to help discover oral mucosal lesions that might not be apparent or visible to the naked eye.
Under examination with the VELscope®System, abnormal tissue typically appears as an irregular, dark area that stands out against the otherwise normal, green fluorescence pattern of surrounding healthy tissue.
