New oral cancer toolkit to be launched this year

Prof Richard Shaw - University of Liverpool Cancer Research Centre, Liverpool, UK

Can you describe the toolkit that you have been working on in collaboration with Cancer Research UK?

Cancer Research UK have done some work previously on doctor and dentist awareness of various conditions and in the past they’ve done something very effective on skin cancer awareness. They approached myself and a number of other specialists in the UK about making something they called an oral cancer toolkit. So there was a perception that primary care doctors and dentists maybe don’t know all of the signs to worry about with oral cancer and some patients are going with early stage oral cancer to their GP and maybe it’s being missed. So the idea is we create a toolkit with an instructional video and a quiz and some photos that can be done as CPD. I’m really pleased that they’ve taken oral cancer seriously and I’ve been helping them to put the content of that toolkit together. Hopefully that’s something that might be copied or done in other countries as well because one of our big problems in oral cancer is late presentation of disease. Oral cancer can be effectively cured with cheap treatment in early stage disease, 80-90% of patients survive, but late stage disease is much more difficult.

When is the toolkit being launched?

The aim for the launch of the toolkit is November ’15 to coincide with the UK oral cancer awareness week.