The restorative dental team at Royal Preston Hospital is all smiles after receiving a £20,000 grant from Rosemere to spend on new equipment to help them treat patients diagnosed with mouth cancers. Patients undergoing surgery and/or radiotherapy and chemotherapy for mouth cancers often require care from the hospital’s restorative dental team before, during and after their treatment as the disease and radiotherapy can alter the mouth’s anatomy and affect speech, swallowing and chewing. Radiotherapy treatment can also cause a dry mouth and patients are sometimes advised to have teeth extracted before radiotherapy to prevent post treatment complications.
Mrs Meena Ranka, Consultant in Restorative Dentistry at the Royal Preston Hospital, which treats not only local patients but as also those from throughout the whole of Lancashire and South Cumbria as the region’s specialist restorative dental centre, said: “Understandably, oral cancer has a major impact on patients’ quality of life. It is most common in the 50 to 74 years age group. Approximately 60-70% of these patients need dental treatment prior to their oncology treatment. Owing to improving survival rates and the ageing population, we will see many more patients in the future.
“Our aim is to try our best to ensure treatment provides patients with a pleasant experience, good outcomes and improvement in their quality of life. The new equipment for implantology and endodontics that we are now able to buy will help us do this.”