Program Overview
The American Cancer Society estimates that there were more than 40,000 new cases of head and neck cancer (HNC) and 11,000 deaths from the disease in 2006. Patients with HNC often face unique and serious complications arising from the natural history and treatment of the disease. Definitive surgical treatment as well as radiotherapy (RT), often in combination with chemotherapy, can cause long-term impairment to organ function and cosmesis, and substantial pain.
Treatment for advanced HNC has evolved in the last 2 decades in response to these complications. Historically, the primary treatment for HNC was surgery, but many patients today, and particularly patients with advanced disease, receive RT in combination with chemotherapy. Advances in RT technology, such as intensity-modulated RT, maximize tumor exposure to radiation while limiting the exposure of healthy tissue. Many patients receive RT concurrently with systemic chemotherapy, which has been shown to improve survival. However, recent data supporting induction chemotherapy have stimulated new discussion on how best to integrate chemotherapy and RT. Adding the epidermal growth factor receptor–targeted agent cetuximab to RT has also been found to increase overall survival while eliciting a less severe adverse event profile when compared with concurrent chemoradiotherapy.
The evolution of treatment strategies has paralleled advances in available technologies. Providing care in multidisciplinary teams is recognized as the ideal approach to treating HNC. However, the relevance of surgery, RT, and systemic medical therapies is case dependent. Choosing the appropriate strategy requires balancing the potential for extending survival with the impact of therapy on quality of life. In the era of multidisciplinary care, collaborative decision making requires an appreciation and understanding of the respective contributions of surgical, radiation, and medical oncologists.
This webcast will review the anatomic site identification, as well as highlight recent advances in multimodal treatment strategies and the multidisciplinary delivery of care for HNC. The roles of practitioners from each clinical oncology discipline will be discussed, with particular attention focused on the interactions of surgical oncologists with radiation and medical oncologists.
