Assessing Oral Cancer Awareness Among Dental Students Gaye Keser 1 & Filiz Namdar Pekiner 1 # American Association for Cancer Education 2018 Abstract The aim of this study was to assess oral cancer awareness among undergraduate dental students in Marmara University Faculty of Dentistry. A validated questionnaire which tested oral cancer awareness was given to third- and fifth-year students of the dental faculty of Marmara University. A total of 198 students participated in this survey. Knowledge of oral cancer risk factors and diagnosis procedures, dentistry student’ s attitude towards oral cancers, management practice regarding oral cancer, and oral cancer information sources were assessed using 25 questions. The data were analyzed with IBM SPSS Statistics 22.0 program. Among 198 participant dentistry students, there were 99 (50%) third-grade and 99 (50%) fifth-grade students. The largest number of the third- and last-grade students identified tobacco (98%) and alcohol usage (87.4%), prior oral cancer lesions (94.9%), viral infections (91.9%), UV exposure (94.4%), betel quid chewing (84.8%), older age (62.1%), and low consumption of fruit and vegetables (85.4%). Both groups showed higher scores in indicating squamous cell carcinoma as the most common form of oral cancer (p < 0.05); yet, third-grade students performed significantly higher scores in indicating erythroplakia and leukoplakia for most likely to be precancerous (p = 0.001; p < 0.05). This study highlighted the importance of improved educational methods for dentistry on oral cancer detection and prevention. Keywords Oral cancer . Awareness . Dentistry students Introduction The incidence of oral cancer is rising in most countries, espe- cially in developing regions [1–5]. Oral cavity cancers were the seventh most commonly occurring cancer and, in terms of mortality, the ninth deadliest by cancer site in the world as stated by World Cancer Report 2014 [6]. Besides skin and thyroid cancers, after larynx carcinoma, oral cavity cancers are supposed to be the second most common head and neck malignancy in Turkey [7]. Midilli et al. reported a series of 231 patients with oral cavity and oropharynx carcinomas from Turkey, and in their study, the oral tongue was found to be the most common location with a male predominance [8]. Tobacco and alcohol use is the primary risk factors for oral cancer in patients over the age of 45 years [9]. Low consump- tion of fruits and vegetables, immunodeficiency exposure to the sun, socio-economic status, and infection with human pap- illoma virus (HPV) are some of the other risk factors for oral cancers [7, 8, 10–14]. Previous studies in literature revealed that the incidence of oral cancer increases with smoking to- bacco, older age, and alcohol consumption [15, 16]. Mainly found in the lip, tongue, floor of the mouth, gingi- va, buccal mucosa, and palatal mucosa, approximately 90% of cancers affecting the oral cavity are squamous cell carcinomas [17]. Squamous cell carcinoma [18], with identifiable clinical features for early lesions [19, 20], may remain undetected in the early stages because of the dentist attitudes and knowledge [21, 22]. Several studies have reported the oral cancer awareness of dental students [3, 23, 24]. A cross-sectional study conducted by Chowdhury et al. [25] had explored the oral cancer knowl- edge and tobacco control attitudes of Bangladeshi dental un- dergraduates. Regardless of increased knowledge in recent years, mortality and morbidity rates for the oral cancer have not improved greatly [26, 27]. While 5-year survival rates are around 50%, patients are frequently diagnosed with advanced stage of the disorder [28]. Therefore, more invasive treatments may lead to a poorer quality of life and disfigurement for these patients [29, 30]. In addition, as they may be visible to the * Gaye Keser gaye.sezgin@marmara.edu.tr; gayekeser@hotmail.com 1 Faculty of Dentistry, Department of Oral Diagnosis and Maxillofacial Radiology, Marmara University, Başıbüyük Sağlık Yerleşkesi Başıbüyük Yolu 9/3 Maltepe, 34854 Istanbul, Turkey Journal of Cancer Education https://doi.org/10.1007/s13187-018-1332-x