Glad you asked!

I’ve used magnification and extra strong light sources to allow me to do the most conservative dentistry possible. We call this microdentistry. The company that I get my microscope glasses from is called Orascoptic. I have a great rep, Lynn Pencek if you ever want someone to talk to about it.  Anyway, Lynn came into my office in the end of last year to help me fix some of my glasses and she told me about this new great product her company has. It’s called Orascoptic DK and it is a painless light that allows me to screen for oral cancer very effectively.

The patient rinses with a special rinse, kind of tastes like salad dressing, and then I turn the lights off, shine this special light in the mouth and look for abnormal cells that would shine in the light. These could be precancerous, cancerous or have nothing to do with cancer. See, the problem is that they all look the same.

It’s not uncommon for someone to have white spots of tissue in their mouth. Sometimes if you keep biting your cheek in one area, or if an area repeatedly gets abraded by food as you eat or regular old cold sores can all look suspicious. The light will separate out many of these.

It’s not definitive, but would prompt me to take a biopsy of the area in question. I’ve been using this Oral CDx brush biopsy system for a few years and have had great results. It’s not really invasive and just running a nylon brush across the tissue will gather enough cells to make a very accurate diagnosis of the condition.

I send the cells out to a lab on a glass slide and they get back to me in a couple of days with the results of the biopsy. If they come back positive or with any concern I will either do a regular surgical biopsy, or I will usually send the patient out to an oral surgeon to do so.

I’m really excited at what the two systems can allow me to offer my patients and the security it can give me and my patients, and as I said before it fits in very nicely with the conservative, minimally-invasive dentistry we’ve practiced in our office for 50 years.

You can find out more about these products here:

http://orascoptic.com/index/orascoptic-products-diagnostic-orascopticdk-2

http://www.sopreventable.com/

Dillon Family Dentistry, 1084 East Lancaster Ave Rosemont PA 19010, Phone Number: 610-228-0329