Background: The literature suggests that the natural history of Oral cancer may vary and the prognosis is different in patients from developing and developed nations.Objective: To evaluate the awareness of oral cancer, its risk factors and to estimate the prevalence of risk factors in a rural population in India. Methods: A hospital based cross sectionalstudy was conducted through case records of oral cancer patients who reported in the year 2012 toPravara Rural Hospital Based Cancer Registry (HBCR), Department of Radiotherapy and Oncology, Rural Medical College and Pravara Rural Hospital, Loni, Maharashtra state, India. The case files and registers of Oral cancer cases was reviewed to collect personal and clinical data about sex, age, occupation, marital status, education, socioeconomic status, habits like tobacco chewers, cigarette smoking, site. A predesigned performa (a core form by HBCR programme) was used to collect the data. Results: In all279 cases of cancer with all sitesof oral cancer, number of male patients was 61.29% whereas females were38.71%. Mean age of the patients was 56.31 years, ranging from 11-81 years, 31.90% are more than 65 years of age. The most common cancers among the males and females are those of tongue (39.77%) and buccal mucosa (35.18%) respectively.Tobacco related cancer patients in males are 83% and in females it was 62%. Conclusions: The prevalence of cancer cases with all sites was higher among elderly males than in females.

Keywords: Hospital based cancer registry, Oral cancer, risk habits, retrospective study, tobacco.