Use of Remote Intervention Tools for the Assessment of Oral Alterations in the Context of Oral Cancer Prevention: A Scoping Review
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.15517/4040xe34Keywords:
Early detection; Oral cancer; Prevention; Remote consultation; Telehealth; Teledentistry.Abstract
To map the use of remote digital intervention tools for the identification of oral lesions suspected of malignancy, describing outcomes, user and professional acceptance, and contributions to the early diagnosis of oral cancer. The review followed the PRISMA-ScR guidelines and searches were conducted in PubMed, Scopus, Embase, LILACS, Web of Science, and grey literature, without restrictions on publication date, geography or language. Articles that helped to answer the question “How can remote intervention tools contribute to the evaluation of oral alterations in the context of oral cancer prevention?” were considered eligible for inclusion. Two independent reviewers (MEM and MLR) performed the articles selection and data extraction. A total of 230 records were identified; of these, 18 met the inclusion criteria. Most interventions were asynchronous, were based on mobile applications and digital platforms, and usually focused on communication between professionals. The majority of studies reported good diagnostic accuracy, a reduction in unnecessary referrals, and feasibility in resource-limited settings. According to this review, most remote intervention tools are based on asynchronous interaction among professionals, with diagnostic accuracy as the main outcome. The results are satisfactory and good agreement with in-person clinical examination is observed. When well structured, digital tools represent promising strategies to expand the reach of preventive actions and promote the early diagnosis of oral cancer.
Downloads
References
Instituto Nacional de Câncer José Alencar Gomes da Silva – INCA. Estimativa 2023: incidência de câncer no Brasil. Rio de Janeiro: INCA, 2022.
Instituto Nacional de Câncer José Alencar Gomes da Silva – INCA. Estimativa 2020: incidência de câncer no Brasil. Rio de Janeiro: INCA, 2019.
Dailah H.G. Mobile health (mHealth) technology in early detection and diagnosis of oral cancer: a scoping review of the current scenario and feasibility. J Health Eng. 2022; 2022: 1-11. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1155/2022/4383303
Flores A.P.D.C., Roxo-Gonçalves M., Batista N.V.R., Gueiros L.A., Linares M., Santos-Silva A.R., et al. Diagnostic accuracy of a telediagnosis service of oral mucosal diseases: a multicentric survey. Oral Surg Oral Med Oral Pathol Oral Radiol. 2022; 134 (1): 65-72. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.oooo.2022.02.005
Carrard V.C., Roxo-Gonçalves M., Santos I.D.S., Romanini J., Carvalho F., Umpierre R.N. Could teledentistry be a solution in the diagnosis of oral lesions? Telemed J E Health. 2024; 30 (6): e1805-7. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1089/tmj.2023.0404
Zaine I., Rodrigues K.R.H., da Cunha B.C.R., Viel C.C., Orlando A.F., Machado Neto O.J., et al. ESPIM: An Ubiquitous Data Collection and Programmed Intervention System using ESM and Mobile Devices. Proceedings of the 22nd Brazilian Symposium on Multimedia and the Web (Webmedia ’16) New York, NY, USA: Association for Computing Machinery; 2016. p. 13-4. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/2976796.2988222
Viel C.C., Rodrigues K.R.H., Zaine I., da Cunha B.C.R., Scalco L.F., Pimentel M.G.P. Personalized Ubiquitous Data Collection and Intervention as Interactive Multimedia Documents. Proceedings of the 2017 ACM Symposium on Document Engineering (DocEng ’17) New York, NY, USA: Association for Computing Machinery; 2017. p. 223-6. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3103010.3121046
Motta A.C.F., Rodrigues K.R.D.H. Could we benefit from oral self-examination during the COVID-19 pandemic? Oral Oncol. 2020 Aug;107: 104840. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.oraloncology.2020.104840
Carrard V., Roxo Gonçalves M., Rodriguez Strey J., Pilz C., Martins M., Martins M., et al. Telediagnosis of oral lesions in primary care: the EstomatoNet Program. Oral Dis. 2018; 24 (6): 1012-9. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/odi.12851
Maugeri A., Barchitta M., Basile G., Agodi A. Public and research interest in telemedicine from 2017 to 2022: infodemiology study of Google Trends data and bibliometric analysis. J Med Internet Res. 2024; 26: e50088. DOI: https://doi.org/10.2196/50088
Peters M.D.J., Godfrey C., McInerney P., Munn Z., Tricco A.C., Khalil H. Chapter 11: Scoping reviews (2020 version). In: Aromataris E, Munn Z, editors. JBI Manual for Evidence Synthesis [Internet]. Adelaide: JBI; 2020. DOI: https://doi.org/10.46658/JBIRM-20-01
Tricco A.C., Lillie E., Zarin W., O’Brien K.K., Colquhoun H., Levac D., et al. PRISMA extension for scoping reviews (PRISMA-ScR): checklist and explanation. Ann Intern Med. 2018; 169 (7): 467-73. DOI: https://doi.org/10.7326/M18-0850
Birur P.N., Sunny S.P., Jena S., Kandasarma U., Raghavan S., Ramaswamy B., et al. Mobile health application for remote oral cancer surveillance. J Am Dent Assoc. 2015; 146 (12): 886-94. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.adaj.2015.05.020
Birur N.P., Patrick S., Bajaj S., Raghavan S., Suresh A., Sunny S.P., et al. A novel mobile health approach to early diagnosis of oral cancer. J Contemp Dent Pract. 2018; 19 (9): 1122-8. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5005/jp-journals-10024-2392
Birur N.P., Gurushanth K., Patrick S., Sunny S.P., Raghavan S.A., Gurudath S., et al. Role of community health worker in a mobile health program for early detection of oral cancer. Indian J Cancer. 2019; 56 (2): 107-13. DOI: https://doi.org/10.4103/ijc.IJC_232_18
Birur N.P., Song B., Sunny S.P., Gurushanth K., Mendonca P., Mukhia N., et al. Field validation of deep learning–based point-of-care device for early detection of oral malignant and potentially malignant disorders. Sci Rep. 2022; 12 (1): 14283. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-18249-x
Vinayagamoorthy K., Acharya S., Kumar M., Pentapati K.C., Acharya S. Efficacy of a remote screening model for oral potentially malignant disorders using a free messaging application: a diagnostic test accuracy study. Aust J Rural Health. 2019; 27 (2): 170-6. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/ajr.12496
Khanna D., Mishra A., Birur P., Shruti T., Gurushanth K., Mukhia N., et al. Diagnostic accuracy of technology-enabled early detection of oral cancer and epidemiology of tobacco and substance use in rural India: a prospective study. Cancer. 2025; 131 (1): e35702. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/cncr.35702
Song B., Sunny S., Li S., Gurushanth K., Mendonca P., Mukhia N., et al. Mobile-based oral cancer classification for point-of-care screening. J Biomed Opt. 2021; 26 (6): 1-10. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1117/1.JBO.26.6.065003
Haron N., Zain R.B., Nabillah W.M., Saleh A., Kallarakkal T.G., Ramanathan A., et al. Mobile phone imaging in low-resource settings for early detection of oral cancer and concordance with clinical oral examination. Telemed J E Health. 2017; 23 (3): 192-9. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1089/tmj.2016.0128
Haron N., Zain R.B., Ramanathan A., Abraham M.T., Liew C.S., Ng K.G., et al. m-Health for early detection of oral cancer in low- and middle-income countries. Telemed J E Health. 2020; 26 (3): 278-85. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1089/tmj.2018.0285
Roxo-Gonçalves M., Da Silva Santos I., Guattini V.L.O., Martins M.D.M., Martins M.A.T., Goulart Molina-Bastos C., et al. EstomatoNet: a 5-year experience of an oral medicine telediagnosis service. Oral Dis. 2023; 29 (5): 2212-23. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/odi.14194
Bhatt S., Isaac R., Finkel M., Evans J., Grant L., Paul B., et al. Mobile technology and cancer screening: lessons from rural India. J Glob Health. 2018; 8 (2): 020421. DOI: https://doi.org/10.7189/jogh.08.020421
Nguyen J., Takesh T., Parsangi N., Song B., Liang R., Wilder-Smith P. Compliance with specialist referral for increased cancer risk in low-resource settings: in-person vs telehealth options. Cancers (Basel). 2023;15(10):2775. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3390/cancers15102775
Martins HDD, Onofre EG, Carvalho LI, Costa MDDAS, Dos Reis LA, Paranaiba LMR, et al. Tele Estomato: a mobile platform for telediagnosis in oral medicine—a national Brazilian experience. Oral Dis. 2025; odi.15343. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/odi.15343
Flores A.P.D.C. Telediagnóstico em estomatologia [tese]. Porto Alegre: Univ Fed Rio Grande do Sul, Fac Odontol; 2019.
Keerthi G., Mukhia N., Sunny S.P., Song B., Raghavan S.A., Gurudath S., et al. Inter-observer agreement among specialists in the diagnosis of oral potentially malignant disorders and oral cancer using store-and-forward technology. Clin Oral Investig. 2023; 27 (12): 7575-81. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00784-023-05347-x
Haron N., Rajendran S., Kallarakkal T.G., Zain R.B., Ramanathan A., Abraham M.T., et al. High referral accuracy for oral cancers and oral potentially malignant disorders using telemedicine. Oral Diseases 2023; 29 (2): 380-9. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/odi.13892
Dos Santos R.T.N., Faria C.A.B., Martins N.F., Duda Júnior L.G.S., Azevêdo A.B.F., da Silva WR, Sobral APV. Use of digital strategies in the diagnosis of oral squamous cell carcinoma: a scoping review. PeerJ. 2024 May 7;12: e17329. DOI: https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.17329
Vijayan, V., Chakrabarty, J., Nayak, R. et al. Effectiveness of mobile health interventions on quality of life for oral cancer: a systematic review. Discov Public Health 22, 610 (2025). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1186/s12982-025-00988-7
Dos Santos R.T.N., Cavalcanti J.F.D.S., Duda Júnior L.G.S., de Vasconcelos A.J.A., Alvares P.R., Sobral A.P.V. Teleconsultation Actions in Reducing In-Person Referrals for Oral Lesions: A Scoping Review. Oral Dis. 2025 Aug; 31 (8): 2404-2418. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/odi.15314
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2026 Maria Eduarda Merlin, Maria Laura Rosse, Alan Grupioni Lourenço, Ana Carolina Fragoso Motta.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
ODOVTOS - Int. J. Dent. Sc. endorses CC BY-NC-SA
This license enables reusers to distribute, remix, adapt, and build upon the material in any medium or format for noncommercial purposes only, and only so long as attribution is given to the creator. If you remix, adapt, or build upon the material, you must license the modified material under identical terms. CC BY-NC-SA includes the following elements:
BY: credit must be given to the creator.
NC: Only noncommercial uses of the work are permitted.
SA: Adaptations must be shared under the same terms.
