We have been conducting mass screening for oral cancer at the Department of Oral Surgery, Medical School, Kurume University since 1982. Analysis of the results revealed that many middle-aged and elderly females had close relatives who died of cancer. Thus, we conducted mass screening using questionnaires compiled by our department for the purpose of compiling background information of the examiness, and studied the analytic results and usefulness of the questionnaire.
The subjects consisted of 355 persons who lived in 4 areas of the Southern part of Fukuoka Prefecture in 1990, who underwent mass screening for oral cancer which were conducted twice a year. First, the examinees filled out the questionnaires, a medical history was taken, and then a physical examination was carried out.
Many subjects were unemployed females whose ages ranged from 50 to younger than 70 years. Gynecological diseases were conspicuous among the findings in the medical history (16%). 62% of the examinees had close relatives who had cancer, and 72% of the examinees regularly received mass screening regularly underwent for cancer at site other than the oral cavity. More examinees were examined because of inconsistent complaints rather than for the specific purpose of cancer detection. Inconsistent complaints which were not limited to the oral cavity were seen in many subjects who exhibited neurotic tendercies. Organic complaints consisted mainly of diseases of the teeth or oral mucosa, indicating that there might be problems in the referral procedures used by dentists in general practice. No case of oral cancer was detected.
The above results showed that many examinees had neurotic tendencies and needed psychosomatic medical consideration. Therefore, further studies will be necessary to investigate how to shorten the screening time for this population of examinees.
