Prof. Michael McCulloch's presentation at the CAPP online conference
Professor Michael McCulloch was presenting on behalf of MDS for DentAlliance.
Professor Michael McCulloch presented at the CAPP online conference on 20th November as MDS representative for DentAlliance.
The presentation title is "Enhancing oral mucosal diagnostic precision through microRNA and confocal microscopy". Oral cancer is the eleventh most prevalent cancer worldwide. The most common oral cancer is oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC), which makes up over 90% of all oral cancers, and if diagnosed early has a five-year survival rate of around 85%. However, the early phase of oral cancer is often asymptomatic, and as most patients seek care only when they experience late-stage symptoms (pain, persistent ulceration, unexplained bleeding, or an oral or neck mass) at which stage the disease is advanced and so the 5-year survival rate decreases as low as 15-50%. Early detection of oral cancer is therefore paramount for improving survival rates and prognosis for patients with the disease. Current diagnostic techniques focus on the detection of malignant and potentially premalignant lesions in the oral cavity. However, subtle lesions may pass undetected, and it is difficult to make a visual distinction between progressing and non-progressing mucosal lesions. This presentation presented Michael's understanding of the aetiology and diagnoses of oral malignant and potentially premalignant lesions and outline his lab-to-clinic translation of minimally invasive approaches aimed at improving diagnostic precision in oral cavity cancer utilising microRNA and intra-oral confocal microscopy.
The webinar was attended by 4800 participants. CAPP received great feedback about the presentation.