Zila Professional Pharmaceuticals, a division of Zila, Inc., international provider of healthcare and biotechnology products for dental/medical professionals and consumers, announced that, in cooperation with Oral Health America's National Spit Tobacco Education Program (NSTEP), professional baseball players will undergo oral cancer exams at minor league spring training camps by dentists using Zila's new ViziLite(TM) disposable
chemiluminescent oral examination kits. The ViziLite device will be used in conjunction with the traditional head and neck exam; suspicious tissue will be biopsied utilizing the OralCDx brush biopsy. Some two dozen teams are expected to participate during March 2002.
NSTEP has conducted annual head and neck exams of minor leaguers, looking for signs of oral cancer and encouraging healthy behavior -- in particular, avoidance of tobacco products. Last year, some 2,000 ballplayers were examined, and more than 250 biopsies were taken. "Our primary concern," says Dr. Robert Klaus, President of Oral Health America, "has been the difficulty of finding early-stage lesions and choosing the optimum sites to biopsy. Incorporating this new technology into our oral exams should help us find more lesions and improve the quality of the biopsies we send to the lab. This could have a very meaningful effect on the quality of our work, and the health of our ballplayer-patients."
The dentists performing the ballplayer exams are members of the Crown Council, a national alliance of leading edge dental practitioners who are leaders in health, wellness and prevention in the community.
Using the ViziLite Test Kit in combination with a conventional visual oral mucosal examination, healthcare providers can improve the identification, evaluation and monitoring of oral mucosal abnormalities in those at increased risk for oral cancer. The American Cancer Society advises that the risk factors for oral cancer are cigarette, cigar or pipe smoking; use of smokeless tobacco; and excessive consumption of alcohol. Incidence rates are more than twice as high in men as in women and are greatest in men who are over age 40.
NSTEP, whose National Chairman is baseball great Joe Garagiola, was founded in 1994 as an effort to educate the baseball family and the American public about the dangers of smokeless or spit tobacco, and break the long-standing link between this potentially deadly drug and America's pastime. Each year, anywhere from 10 to 16 million Americans put their health at risk by using spit tobacco products. The National Spit Tobacco Education Program's mission is to prevent people, especially young people, from starting to use spit tobacco, and to help all users quit. NSTEP is funded in part by The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
Dr. Ralph Green, Vice President and General Manager of Zila Professional Pharmaceuticals, said patented single-use ViziLite Test Kits were introduced at the Chicago Mid-Winter Meeting in late February, and are being distributed to U.S. and Canadian dentists exclusively by Patterson Dental Supply, Inc. Asian distribution is being handled by World Medical Trade Organization, Inc. More information about the ViziLite product is available at www.ViziLite.com . Zila is donating ViziLite product for this NSTEP screening program.
