Diagnostic aids for early detection of oral squamous cell carcinoma: concepts and emerging techniques

INTRODUCTION: Due to unavailability of rapid diagnostics and lack of awareness, oral squamous cell carcinoma is detected at late metastasis stage. Oral cavity is the most malignant epithelial carcinoma site affecting life cycle of a person. EVIDENCE ACQUISITION: All the available information regarding oral squamous cell carcinoma, various biomarkers, causes, symptoms and diagnosis strategies is collected via electronic search and articles of peer-reviewed journals. EVIDENCE SYNTHESIS: This article briefly overviews symptoms, causes, biomarkers, and techniques for oral cancer diagnosis. While there is considerable development of point-of-care (POC) for oral cancer and health care, this review shows significance of saliva-based nano-device sensitive for early stage diagnosis of oral cancer, this may help in comfortable, painless, non-invasive and rapid detection. CONCLUSIONS: Thus it is necessary to develop cost effective, selective and sensitive biosensor to diagnose oral cancer at point-of-care to decide accurate therapeutics.