ADA summit convenes dentists, physicians to collaborate in fight against oral cancer

More than 58,000 new cases reported in 2024 in US

Leaders in dentistry and medicine called for increased collaboration in the fight against oral cancer during the American Dental Association’s Oral Cancer Summit on Feb. 19 in Chicago.

The event brought together key stakeholders for panels on dental and medical integration, new screening technologies and more.

"Oral health is health — dentists do much more than create beautiful smiles; our work can save lives,” ADA President Brett Kessler, D.D.S., said. “Achieving optimal health for our patients is a collaborative, interdisciplinary effort. The ADA was thrilled to welcome leading experts in oral cancer to discuss how the medical and dental communities can make a difference for the thousands of Americans diagnosed with oral cancer each year and for the many more who will benefit from prevention. The partnership between dentistry, physicians and cancer researchers is crucial in sharing insights and finding solutions to combat this disease."

In 2024, an estimated 58,450 new cases of oral and oropharyngeal cancer and an estimated 12,230 deaths were reported in the U.S., according to data from the National Cancer Institute of the National Institutes of Health. Two of the most common risk factors for oral and oropharyngeal cancer are tobacco and alcohol use, and human papillomavirus infection is also a risk factor for oropharyngeal cancer, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“One of the biggest challenges in oral cancer facing the dental and medical communities is the lack of tools with high specificity and sensitivity for detecting cancer at its earliest stage and differentiating between benign and pre-cancerous/cancerous lesions,” Kathleen Goss, Ph.D., told the ADA News after the event.

Dr. Goss, senior scientific director in extramural discovery science at the American Cancer Society, participated in the dental-medical integration panel during the summit.

“In addition to the development of these tools, there is an urgent need to reduce the silos between all of the players who impact the journey of a patient with oral cancer — for example, payers, navigators, advocacy organizations, etc. — and improve education and awareness of how to best prevent, detect, treat and survive oral cancer,” she said.

Dr. Goss was joined on the panel by Jesse Ehrenfeld, M.D., immediate past president of the American Medical Association. Dr. Ehrenfeld shared his thoughts on the effects of separating dental and medical benefits during the panel and echoed them later to the ADA News.

“A medical-dental schism from 1840 persists and prevents oral health’s integration with overall health, to the detriment of many patients,” he said. “This separation of medical and dental care forces many in vulnerable populations to seek oral health care in emergency departments. The fact is, despite availability of good national oral health curricula for medical trainees, most physicians are ill equipped to identify oral cancers or avoid unnecessary referrals. This can have a profound impact on patient health.

Another summit panel addressed screening tools in development that could potentially help detect oral cancer earlier. However, no such tools are approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration at this time.

These tools should not only be proved to be safe for patients but also accurate and useful to dentists in a real-world clinical setting, said Mark Lingen, D.D.S., Ph.D., oral and maxillofacial pathologist, professor of pathology at the University of Chicago Medicine and former member of the ADA Council on Scientific Affairs.

“We need to work together. We need to pursue the latest and greatest technology,” Dr. Lingen said during the panel. “It needs to be absolutely validated that it has use in the hands of a general dentist or a [primary care provider] so that then we have confidence to push that forward.”

In addition to promoting more collaboration between dentistry and medicine and supporting innovation in the oral cancer space, attendees also discussed the possibility of updating the ADA’s 2017 Evaluation of Potentially Malignant Disorders in the Oral Cavity Clinical Practice Guideline as another next step after the summit.

For resources from the ADA related to oral cancer, visit the Oral Health Topics page on head and neck cancer.