Experts Advise to Prevent a Sore from Developing Into Something More

News Desk, News Nation 360 : Head and neck cancer is a major concern in India's health landscape. Being the second most frequent cancer in the country after breast cancer, it has a broad impact on both urban and rural communities. The country records more than 2,00,000 new instances annually, with a city like Kolkata alone diagnosing about 1,000 of those cases. This terrible illness affects the areas that control speech, eating, and breathing—the mouth, throat, neck, nose, thyroid, salivary glands, and, finally, the face, which is the most important part of human beings. Dr. Kinjal Shankar Majumdar, MS, M.Ch. – Consultant, Head & Neck Onco Surgery, Narayana RN Tagore Hospital, Mukundapur, Kolkata has discussed about this issue. Head and neck cancer is a major health problem in India, being the country's second most prevalent cancer, second only to breast cancer. It affects rural and urban communities alike, with more than 200,000 new cases reported every year countrywide. Kolkata alone has almost 1,000 new cases every year. It is a serious illness that interferes with vital functions such as talking, eating, breathing, and even alters the identity of a person's face, involving the mouth, throat, neck, nose, thyroid, and salivary glands. It is a Herculean task to cure these cancers. Because the anatomy of the head and neck area is so complex, surgery does not just consist of tumour removal but also of delicate reconstruction of an individual's face and delicate rehabilitation of his or her fundamental functions. It becomes a survival and quality of life battle. The main cause of this epidemic is tobacco, whether smoked or chewed in varieties such as gutkha and khaini. It is used by all socioeconomic sections. In eastern and northern India, there has been a crisis of oral cancer, which, as per major cancer institutions in Kolkata, constitutes nearly 45% of all head and neck cancers. Sadly, the battle is then hard to fight from the start. A staggering 60-70% of Kolkata patients are diagnosed in advanced stages of cancer, reflecting the national trend. Low levels of awareness, social stigma, and logistical barriers are frequent causes of delay in diagnosis until the cancer is much more difficult to manage. In spite of all this, Kolkata presents hope in the form of some of the nation's most sophisticated cancer treatment facilities. Here, expert head and neck surgeons head multidisciplinary teams. Their twin mandate is to survive and maintain vital functions. State-of-the-art, minimally invasive methods such as robotic and laser surgery are emerging as mighty new weapons in this fight. But the most potent weapon against this disease is in personal, everyday decisions, not just in the surgeon's hands. The way to prevention is evident: people need to put a healthy lifestyle first, leave tobacco behind, cut down on alcohol, practice proper oral hygiene, and avoid the sun. As medical science evolves daily, the central message remains unchanged: early discovery saves lives. The common goal has to be to turn the story away from late-stage emergency toward proactive screening and early intervention. With the World Health Organisation forecasting the sharpest rise in cancer rates in developing nations over the next two decades, the urgency for a united and comprehensive effort has never been greater. There is much more work to be done.