Treatment Option For Head And Neck Cancer
The three main types of treatment for managing head and neck cancer are radiation therapy, surgery and chemotherapy. The primary treatment is radiation or surgery, or a combination of both chemotherapy is often used as an adjunct or adjuvant. The optimal combination of the three treatment modalities for a patient with head and neck cancer depends on the site and stage (stage) of disease.
Overall, patients with head and neck cancers in early stages (especially cancers confined to the site of origin) are treated with a single mode, either radiotherapy or surgery. Patients with more widespread cancer is often treated with concurrent chemotherapy and radiotherapy. Sometimes, according to the clinical setting, patients are treated with surgery followed by postoperative radiotherapy and chemotherapy.
If the treatment plan consists of radiotherapy alone for early cancer, there is also radiation therapy to the neck. Furthermore, it may be necessary to remove lymph nodes in the neck if the condition of the glands in the neck is relatively large or if the cancer glands in the neck has not been fully removed upon completion of the course of radiotherapy.
Surgery is another treatment that may be necessary before or after radiation therapy. In general, if indicated surgical removal of primary tumor, radiotherapy is given later, if necessary. However, sometimes the cancer is large or can not be removed completely at first. The radiation is then given first to try to reduce the size of the tumor, and surgery follows radiotherapy.
Recent studies suggest that chemotherapy given at the same time as radiotherapy is more effective if given before radiotherapy. Therefore, radiation therapy program sometimes includes chemotherapy if the cancer is advanced (advanced stage III or IV). The drugs often are given together with radiation therapy are cisplatin (Platinol) and Cetuximab (Erbitux). Sometimes, other drugs may include fluorouracil (5-FU, Adrucil), carboplatin (Paraplatin) and paclitaxel (Taxol). This is an incomplete list of chemotherapy drugs and your doctor may choose others. Chemotherapy can be administered in various ways, such as a low dose daily, a moderate dose every week, or a relatively high dose every three or four weeks.
Typically, you use one of the following radiotherapy to treat head and neck cancer.
* The external beam radiotherapy (EBT): a method for delivering a beam of high energy X rays at the tumor site. The beam is generated outside the patient (usually through a linear accelerator), and if directed to the tumor site. These X-rays can kill cancer cells and careful treatment planning allows leaving surrounding normal tissue without much effect. See the external beam radiation therapy
* Intensity Modulated Radiotherapy (IMRT, for its acronym in English, [Intensity-modulated radiation therapy]) is an advanced form of radiation therapy that uses high-precision X-ray accelerators to computer-controlled precise radiation doses to malignant tumors or specific areas within the tumor. The radiation dose is designed to comply with a three-dimensional (3D) by modulation of tumor (control) of the intensity of the radiation beam to focus a higher dose to the tumor while minimizing exposure to radiation in normal cells.