A high profile British dentist found himself in court after he was accused of missing the diagnosis of cancer in his patients.

It seems one patient had a tumour in pre-cancerous state for 15 years, but this was missed completely every time the individual went for a check-up.

Oral cancer is a growing and massive problem in the UK and elsewhere with around 6,000 diagnoses each year in Britain alone.

Dental organisations such as the British Dental Health Foundation have for the last couple of years been trying to get dentists across the UK to carry out routine checks for cancer and pre-cancerous growth during a patient’s normal routine examination.

While diagnosing the signs for this awful disease is difficult, with expert training dentists should be able to detect the early signs. It is therefore unfortunate that this particular senior and experienced dentist should miss the signs, and more importantly miss them over a long period of time.

However it also appears that the case above is not simply a one off. The General Dental Council (GDC) has charged the dentist with 46 serious charges of misconduct.

Oral cancers are now fast becoming one of the top groups of cancers in the UK today, and in the main they are prevalent because of poor lifestyle.

Smoking is still the number one cause of the disease but poor diet along with overindulgence in drinking so called soft drinks such as coca cola are having a devastating effect.

Coke as it is affectionately known strips the oesophagus of its cellular lining. This in turn leaves the mouth in a precarious situation if people continue to drink sugary and acidic drinks unabated.

Drinking sugary products should only be consumed occasionally but they have become the staple diet of growing numbers of people.

Hopefully with a growing awareness of oral cancer people will start to take their health and diet more seriously.

And while it is always sad to see such cases of misconduct occurring, it is a positive step in getting dentists to take their own role more seriously.