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Free oral health screening at SDA
The Saipan Seventh-day Adventist Clinic is offering free screenings for those who want to check their oral health.
SDA clinic director Dr. Kenneth Pierson said the screening is open to any person who feels that they might need something checked.
“If they have some question about their mouth, or worried about a sore that hasn’t healed, we will have them come in and just take a look,” Pierson said. “As far as treatment goes, from just looking at something, you can tell whether it looks suspicious or not.”
The screening will determine whether anything is going on or if they need a follow up. “If it hasn’t healed in two weeks then you’ve got to follow it up,” Pierson said.
If it were something that is critical and should be followed up, Pierson said they would recommend a biopsy, a medical test commonly performed by a surgeon or an interventional radiologist involving sampling of cells or tissues for examination.
“What we will do is a biopsy and take a sample and we would send it to the pathologists and will then look it through a microscope and then at that point they would diagnose at a cellular level whether it is cancerous or not,” Pierson said.
Pierson said if the patient does have oral cancer, they would be referred to an off-island center that does cancer treatment.
For more information on SDA’s free oral health cancer screening, contact SDA at 234-6323.
