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VELscope® Oral Cancer Screening
Proudly Serving Bellevue, Kirkland, and Seattle
What is VELscope®?
We are now using VELscope, an exciting new technology developed to detect oral cancer!Mortality rates associated with oral cancer have remained unchanged for over 30 years, partly due to the limitations of white light examination of the oral mucosa. This has created a dire need for an improved oral mucosal screening procedure that would make it possible for clinicians to accurately identify tissue changes at and below the surface before they become apparent under white light examination.
In response to such a need, the Vancouver-based company LED Medical Diagnostics Inc. (LED-MD) has developed the VELscope System. It is a technology platform based on the direct visualization of human tissue fluorescence and the changes in fluorescence that occur when abnormal tissue is present.
The VELscope® System Handpiece emits a safe blue light into the oral cavity, which excites the tissue from the surface of the epithelium through to the basement membrane and into the stroma beneath, causing it to fluoresce. We are then able to immediately view the different fluorescence responses to help differentiate between normal and abnormal tissue. In fact, the VELscope® System is the only adjunctive device cleared by the FDA and Health Canada to help discover oral mucosal lesions that might not be apparent or visible to the naked eye.
Under examination with the VELscope® System, abnormal tissue typically appears as an irregular, dark area that stands out against the otherwise normal, green fluorescence pattern of surrounding healthy tissue.
