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My first goal was to get the message out to the state of Kentucky so who better
than the population that is right here at the state fair.
A lot of these people come from areas not around Louisville.
They’re not exposed to the, maybe, education that larger cities have,
so I thought this was a great place to start. So that was my first goal.
My second goal was to get the students involved and have
them focus on something that was for the better good.
And my third goal was to, you know, get UofL’s School of Dentistry involved.
And you know have them be out there and showing what
they are for and what they can do for the community too.
There's approximately 400 new cases of oral cancer diagnosed every year in the state of Kentucky,
which is considerably higher than most other states. Considering it’s also a relatively small state.
It’s a great opportunity for us to come out and do something good for our community,
as well as work side-by-side with pathologists which is an opportunity we don’t generally get in the school setting.
Certainly this is part of our curriculum that really carries on into the profession.
So it’s an integral part of our teaching program.
It provides service to the community to be able to screen the population in a venue
like this where there’s a large group of people who may not get normally
a chance to get an oral examination by people who are trained in this particular technique.
We have several years of oral pathology while we’re in school. We sit in a lecture hall.
We see a bunch of pictures, and we learn what to look for and what’s normal and what’s not normal.
But it’s not until you get into the mouth and you get the chance to meet a bunch of different
mouths that you really understand that this is what I need to see in the future.
When you do an examination they’ll be going through the whole oral cavity.
They’re going to be looking at lips, cheeks, tongue, floor of mouth, the tonsiler area,
close to your back part of the throat.
For patients who get an early diagnosis this way, the prognosis for something like this is certainly much better.
And the nice part of this, this is a painless examination, it doesn’t take very long and it doesn’t hurt.