Vizilite.

[Hottub]

This may be more for Joe than Steve. But they make a great tag team, so I'm sure we will get the info we need.

First of all. When you go to the dentist for your regular cleaning, make sure he is certified in Vizilite. It is inexpensive, painless, and can save you a world of problems down the road.
Quite simply it is a method for the early detection of oral cancers.

I had mine done last week, and passed. No problems. :thumbup:
But the visual exam turned up a spot of Leukoplakia. Dr. Z said it was small, and probably no cause for alarm. But there is no real treatment. Should I be worried?
He asked if I smoked. I told him I love cigs with my beer, and a few cigars with my buds. The treatment plan was quite simple. STOP!
Is this now the end of the last of life's little pleasures?

Thanks in advance Dr.'s.

Your friend,
Tub.

[Dr Steve]

This may be more for Joe than Steve. But they make a great tag team, so I'm sure we will get the info we need.

First of all. When you go to the dentist for your regular cleaning, make sure he is certified in Vizilite. It is inexpensive, painless, and can save you a world of problems down the road.
Quite simply it is a method for the early detection of oral cancers.

I had mine done last week, and passed. No problems. :thumbup:
But the visual exam turned up a spot of Leukoplakia. Dr. Z said it was small, and probably no cause for alarm. But there is no real treatment. Should I be worried?
He asked if I smoked. I told him I love cigs with my beer, and a few cigars with my buds. The treatment plan was quite simple. STOP!
Is this now the end of the last of life's little pleasures?

Thanks in advance Dr.'s.

Your friend,
Tub.

Vizilite is cool, but it's mostly a marketing thing...there's nothing really new there. Basically (and we talked about this a little on the first weird medicine show), if you take a mucus membrane and bathe it in a dilute acetic acid solution (vinegar), cancers and other lesions will turn bright white. The Visilite helps to reveal these 'acetowhite' lesions in the oral cavity.

Oral cancer SUCKS, and early detection is very cool. Anything that promotes early detection is groovy in my book, even if it is just old ideas recycled. If you don't look, you won't find these lesions, and things like Visilite encourage people to look (not the least reason being that they can charge extra for it).

With regard to the leukoplakia (a white lesion in the mouth that doesn't need acetic acid to show up), the New England Journal of Medicine reports: [leukoplakia] is considered to be potentially malignant, with a transformation rate in various studies and locations ranging from 0.6 to 18 percent. (https://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/extract/350/14/1382)

This means that the probability that you WON'T get oral cancer is 82-99.4%. The odds are overwhelming in your favor. However, I wouldn't push it.

Look, I know I'm the doctor who sends cigars to his favorite radio host, and who pushes www.donrigo.com on his website, but I've stated a thousand times that smoking is bad for you and one should only buy cigars for their investment value and not smoke them.

I was a three-pack per day guy for too many years. Every single one of my terminal lung and head/neck cancer patients has smoking in their histories. Some people can get away with it, to be sure, as I've had tons of 90 year old smokers who died of old age. The problem is, no one can tell ahead of time who can get away with it and who can't. If I had a blood test that said "hottub will never get cancer no matter how much he smokes", I'd tell you to go smoke your head off (well, there's heart disease and emphysema to deal with, but you get my point). Barring that, the only thing I can recommend is that everyone quit smoking immediately. For men, it's the number one cause of impotence. The cancer and emphysema never scared me, but that little fact did, which helped me to finally quit the damned things.

anyway, sorry for the tirade. but leave the cigars alone, willya?


your pal,



steve