Oral cancer is a public health problem. Despite all the efforts and improvements in the field of oncology, the mortality rate had not significantly declined in the course of recent years. This may be due to the fact that diagnosis of oral cancer is frequently delayed. The main goal of this study is to analyze the factors responsible of this delay. We analyzed the clinical history of 76 patients with oral cancer diagnosed in our center from 2013 to 2016. We divided the diagnostic delay into 3 major groups: delay attributable to patient, delay attributable to public health system and delay attributable to professionals. According with our results, the major delay is attributable to patient. However, we find that the waiting time to get an appointment with Maxillofacial Unit is too long for patient referred by family doctors and dentists (α <0,01). Moreover, we could observe that other hospital professionals such as emergency physicians and ENT specialists take less time to suspect oral cancer than family doctors or dentists (α <0,01). However, dentists suspected oral cancer earlier than family doctors (α <0,01).the major diagnostic delay is due to patient and this could depends on several variables. However, the waiting time to obtain a specialist consultation after the request of family doctors or dentists is too long. The creation of special derivation protocols is essential in cases of suspicious lesions.