For a patient with head and neck cancer, the cure rate is only 30 percent. That's because the disease is often detected in the late stages. Now catching the cancer earlier may be as simple as gargling and spitting in a cup. A new mouthwash may be able to see what doctors can't.For patients, late stage diagnosis makes treating neck cancer more difficult. Researchers developed a quick, inexpensive mouthwash to detect head and neck cancers earlier.
The patient rinses with the saline mouthwash. After they spit it out, doctors add antibodies that identify molecules involved with cancer. In about 48 hours, if there's cancer detected in the saliva, the molecules show up in color.
"We've found that these molecules show up differently in the oral rinses from patients that have cancer compared to patients that don't have cancer," Elizabeth Franzmann, M.D., an otolaryngologist at Sylvester Cancer Center at the University of Miami.
In a study that included 102 head and neck cancer patients and 69 patients with benign disease, the oral rinse distinguished cancer from benign disease nearly 90 percent of the time.
If head and neck cancer is caught early, doctors say they could be able to cure at least 80 percent of cases. They're working on a version of the mouthwash that can be used as an over-the-counter test or administered at community health centers.
