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fiannotti@planningsource.comIdentafi™ 3000 Ultra KOL Dr. Larry Hamburg In DentalCompare Video on Oral Cancer Fight – “Luckiest Man on the Face of the Earth" Recounts Personal Battle
With Stage IV Squamous Cell Carcinoma in 6:46 Online Interview
SOUTH SAN FRANCISCO, September, 2009 — Larry Hamburg is a dentist who got oral cancer. Two years ago Dr. Hamburg was diagnosed with Stage IV oral cancer — squamous cell carcinoma, the most serious. Today Dr. Hamburg is founder of The Oral Cancer Awareness Foundation, or OrCA (www.oralcancerawareness.com) and a key opinion leader for Trimira LLC's Identafi™ 3000 ultra oral cancer detection device.
"Luckiest Person Coming Out of 10th Floor"
In a just-released 6-minute, 46-second long video on DentalCompare.com ("The Buyer's Guide for Dental Professionals"), Dr. Hamburg recounts his personal battle with oral cancer, his recovery, and the need for every dentist to do a regular oral cancer screening of every patient using the best adjunctive technology available. He observed that oral cancer kills one person every hour of every day. It is typically detected by a doctor, not a dentist, by which time it is usually a late-stage diagnosis.
Dr. Larry Hamburg's Personal Struggle With Oral Cancer
www.dentalcompare.com/video_view.asp?videoid=475
He pointed out that oral cancer is more deadly (in terms of five-year mortality rate) than cervical, breast, liver, kidney, thyroid, colon, or prostate cancers. It is growing at double-digit rates. despite declines in alcohol and tobacco use. This increase is due largely to the spread of HPV-16 and -18 via all forms of sex, but particularly oral sex. Seventy-eight percent of those diagnosed with Stage IV oral cancer will be dead in five years.
Conversely, those diagnosed with Stage I have an 80-90 percent survival rate.
Dr. Hamburg had a superball-size mass at the base of his tongue, with a secondary tumor in his lymph node the size of a baseball. He realized when he couldn't button his shirt collar that it had to be more than an infection. Subsequently, he underwent seven chemo treatments and 33 radiation sessions, radiation implant therapy, and surgery.
He said that, like his hero Lou Gehrig, he feels like "the luckiest man on the face of the earth" — or, as he was quoted in the February 6, 2008 issue of Newsweek, "the luckiest person coming out of the 10th floor at Beth Israel's Head and Neck Cancer ward."
"Unlike others there I kept my tongue and vocal cords," Dr. Hamburg said. "Outside of a lengthy scar on my neck, the loss of my taste buds and salivary gland function, and some numbness in my fingers and toes from chemo and radiation treatments, I'm fine."
He is in remission, and, in fact, considers it a miracle that he can speak. Indeed, that is why he titled his speaking company I Can Speak! Seminars (www.icanspeakseminars.com).
He noted the irony of his personal battle with oral cancer is that as a doctor it's his job to advise patients to take their health seriously. But for six months he ignored that advice.
But he said that in retrospect the cancer has been a gift because it has transformed him into a crusader against what has become one of the deadliest cancers.
In, 2008, Dr. Hamburg founded OrCA, whose mission it is to "take a bite out of cancer" by making people aware of the insidious nature of the disease. Catching it early is vital, said Dr. Hamburg, who has a restorative dental practice, Hudson Valley Dental Arts, P.C., in LaGrange, N.Y. He founded the OrCA Blues Band (www.orcabluesband.com) to raise prevention awareness. He also lectures on cosmetic dentistry and has taught at New York University.
Identafi Is Only Device to Use "Multispectral" Technology
"The gold standard of determining if a patient has cancer or pre-cancer continues to be the biopsy," Dr. Hamburg said. "But certainly it is not practical to do a biopsy on every patient when about 10 percent of patients have something that may be of concern."
He noted that Trimira's small cordless Identafi™ 3000 ultra, which was created exclusively for intraoral use, minimizes false positives/negatives and reveals abnormalities in oral tissue missed by the naked eye. "My staff and I especially like that the light fits into the mouth, which means you can see the area at the base of the tongue, where my tumor was, and where a great percentage of cancers are found."
The multispectral optical fluorescence and reflectance technology used in Identafi™ 3000 ultra was developed in collaboration with The University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, Rice University, and British Columbia Cancer Research Centre. "My discussions with the research scientists at M.D. Anderson have convinced me that multispectral technology really does represent a quantum leap in the visualization of mucosal abnormalities, including oral cancer or premalignant dysplasia," he added.
Identafi™ 3000 Ultra
Identafi™ 3000 ultra is ergonomically shaped for dentists, periodontists, oral surgeons, otolaryngologists, and primary-care physicians. The industry-leading device incorporates next-generation oral cancer-detection optical technology that is changing the screening and diagnostic landscape for the nation's dentists and doctors.
Identafi™ 3000 ultra is the only device on the market that illuminates with three wavelengths of brilliant white, violet, and green-amber light. Unlike other methods, Identafi™ 3000 ultra empowers doctors and dentists to pinpoint biochemical and morphological changes in cells. The multispectral technology not only is effective in screening oral cancers but also in diagnosing cervical, skin, gastrointestinal, and bladder cancers.
About Trimira™ LLC
Trimira LLC is venture capital-funded by Dallas cancer research philanthropist T. Boone Pickens, of oil and windfarming fame. Other Trimira sister subsidiaries are working on screening and diagnostic devices for skin, cervical, gastrointestinal, and bladder cancers. Remicalm, as the parent company, has licensed exclusive use of certain of its patents and patents pending for use as a cervical cancer product to be later expanded to include additional epithelial-based cancers. Remicalm's core technologies are based on high-speed, high-resolution capabilities from its patented optical processing technology platforms and include the ability to read metabolic and physiologic differences in diseased and healthy tissue in the human body.
Visit Trimira™ at: http://www.trimira.net
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