Awareness of the Oral Cancer Risk Factors in People from Nothern-Eastern Region of Poland

Background: The aim of the study presented in this paper is to investigate patient knowledge about the existence of oral cancer and the awareness of the impact of smoking on the development of this malignancy.

Methods: Patients managed at the Department of Maxillofacial and Plastic Surgery in Bialystok, Poland, voluntarily completed an anonymous questionnaire concerning this issue. The collected clinical material was stratified by the respondents’ age and was subjected to statistical analysis.

Results: The percentage of smokers was 53.2% of the subjects from the Group 1, 54.8% in the Group 2 and 31,4% in the Group 3. A total of 64.3%, 65.5%, 84.9% of people from each group respectively believed that smoking could increase the risk of cancer. Unfortunately, only 44% of the subjects from Group 1 and slightly over 33% in the other age groups knew that cancer can also develop in the oral cavity. Most of respondents (90,3%) confirm that the widened knowledge about oral cancer would induce the change of their harmful habits.

Conclusion: Our research clearly points the lack of appropriate patients’ knowledge about oral cancer and smoking in most of the study population. Most of people are conscious about this problem and declare the willingness of expanding their knowledge in this field. Future health-promoting programmes and campaigns organised to prevent cancer should raise the society’s awareness of the risks of smoking to oral health. The higher the patient awareness of a given issue, the greater the readiness to prevent the disease.