EDITOR, - Iain Hutchison states that “only six British medical schools offer any formal teaching in mouth examination by oral surgeons” and that “any patient with a red or white intraoral patch should attend their local oral surgery department as a matter of some urgency.”1

The investigation and management of cancer of the mouth and jaws is not the sole remit of oral surgeons but is an area in which there is an interface with many other specialties. As medical students in Glasgow, we were taught the examination of the oral cavity and the management of intraoral carcinoma by general surgeons; ear, nose, and …