Abstract

Objectives: Oral cancer is one of the 11 most frequently occurring cancers worldwide and has a higher proportion of deaths per number of cases than breast cancer or cervical cancer because of late detection. In the present study we found out the difference in the dielectric properties of saliva between controls, controls with tobacco habit but having no lesion and patients with squamous cell carcinoma. The dielectric parameters have correlated with histopathological grades and clinical stages of oral squamous cell carcinoma. Methods: Dielectric relaxation studies have been carried out for saliva of 88 (48 oral cancer and 40 healthy) patients having tobacco habit but no squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) and those having tobacco habit with SCC using picoseconds time domain reflectometry over the frequency range of 10 MHz to 20 GHz at room temperature.