Prevalence and Assessment of Various Risk Factors among Oral Cancer Cases in a Rural Area of Maharashtra State, India - An Epidemiological Study

摘要

Background: The 'organ distribution' of cancer is often strikingly dissimilar in different groups of population and varies greatly from one community to another and also differs in different communities in the same geographical location, depending on the practices, lifestyles and the influence of deleterious habits like use of tobacco and or alcohol of the people. Among various cancers affecting the human body, oral cancer accounts for nearly one third of it. Objectives: i) To find out the relative frequency of oral cancer in relation to other sites from Hospital Based Cancer Registry (HBCR) ii) To find out the various risk factors associated with oral cancer and iii) To recommend appropriate preventive measures. Methodology: A hospital based retrospective cross sectional study was conducted through case records of oral cancer patients who reported in the year 2013 to Pravara Rural HBCR, Department of Radiotherapy and Oncology, Rural Medical College and Pravara Rural Hospital, Loni, Maharashtra state, India. The case files and registers of oral cancer cases were reviewed to collect personal and clinical data about sex, age, occupation, marital status, education, socioeconomic status, habits like tobacco chewing and cigarette smoking. A predesigned performa (a core form by HBCR programme) was used to collect the data. The statistical analysis was done using SYSTAT for Windows version 12 and categorical data was analysed by using Chi-square test. Results: In all1328 patients of all cancers visited the hospital during the period January 2013 to December 2013. Out of these, 349 (26.28%) were of oral cancer cases. The sex wise distribution revealed 256 (73.25%) among males and 93(26.65%) among females. Mean age of the patients was 54.98 years, ranging from 15-78 years, 31.23% were more than 65 years of age. The most oral cancer sites among the males and females were those of tongue (37.82%) and buccal mucosa (32.95%) respectively. Tobacco related cancer patients in males were 79% and in females 61% .Conclusion: The present study findings suggest that prevalence of oral cancer is more among tobacco users especially those using tobacco quid which is more common among Indian women which is in line with most of the epidemiological studies about oral cancer in India. There is an urgent need to implement and sustain appropriate preventive measures and oral cancer screening programmes for the community.