Educational interventions for oral cancer prevention and early detection in Latin America

Introduction: Oral cancer carries a high morbidity and mortality burden in Latin America and is often diagnosed at advanced stages. Education of patients and the community is proposed as a route to promote early recognition. Methods: Systematic review following PRISMA 2020. Scopus, EMBASE, OpenAlex, PubMed, Crossref and Semantic Scholar were searched from 2016 to 10 June 2026, without language restriction for English, Spanish and Portuguese. Results: Of 381 records identified, ten studies were included, seven from Cuba, two from Venezuela and one from Chile, all of before-after design with or without a control group. Knowledge of risk factors and warning signs increased in all ten studies; the proportion with adequate knowledge rose from 34.8% to 67.4% in one study and from 45.5% to 91.0% in another. Oral self-examination practice increased from 0% to 82.6% in the only study that quantified it at the fourth week. Conclusions: Educational interventions improved knowledge and oral self-examination practice, but the evidence is of low to moderate certainty because of the predominance of designs without a control group and small samples.