Two Patients, One Diagnosis: A Story of Clinical Vigilance vs Clinical Neglect

October 2025 • Jo-Anne Jones, RDH • Dentistry Today - October 24, 2025

She was 22 years old, vibrant, and planning her future in April of 2024, just 2 months before completing her undergraduate degree. At this age, most people are stepping into new chapters, full of excitement and plans for the future. The plan was to travel in Europe that summer. Instead, she found herself sitting across from an oncologist, facing a life-altering diagnosis that had been missed—repeatedly. What began as a subtle lesion, dismissed by the dental team, would go on to demand invasive and corrective surgery, weeks of painful healing, psychological trauma, and the looming threat of recurrence. The warning signs were there—but they weren’t acted upon. In a profession rooted in prevention, how do we explain failing to act upon what could have saved her from needless suffering? And more importantly—how do we ensure it doesn’t happen again?

In contrast, he was 34 years old and mentioned a ‘funny feeling’ on his hard palate accompanied by swelling, otherwise asymptomatic. Following an examination by the dentist, a subsequent referral was made to a specialist. A suspicious area, its extent invisible to the naked eye, was then biopsied and followed with the assistance of direct fluorescence visualization (DFV), a technology platform that was no stranger to medicine being used for assessment in the cervix, lungs, and the colon. The adjunctive screening device was VELscope (LED Dental, Inc). The diagnosis was the same; however, the discovery, treatment, and re-evaluation of the lesion presented a very different pathway for this patient.

Let’s now take a deeper dive into these 2 separate cases, comparing and contrasting how screening methods either enhanced or lack thereof hindered treatment and outcomes.