Figure 1

Clinical context of salivary diagnostics. Salivary diagnostics could reduce the number of unnecessary referrals to hospital for invasive, time-consuming and expensive diagnostics. An example situation is shown (with examples of percentages of patients that might be involved in parentheses) for the use of a saliva biomarker (Bx) test, in which a health professional, such as a dentist, observes a suspicious oral lesion. This is followed by screening of saliva, and if appropriate, referral to a specialist. Salivary diagnostics using clinically validated biomarkers can be implemented in the early stages of the clinical management hierarchy (green arrow and box), thus significantly reducing unnecessary referrals to specialists and unnecessary biopsies seen in current clinical approaches, where management follows the black arrows exclusively and results in high (such as 96%) negative test rates at biopsy (Bx-; red circle).