Improving head and neck cancer treatment
Source: www.uc.edu Author: Tim Tedeschi, University of Cincinnati News When the medical community finds a treatment for a particular cancer, the work doesn’t stop. Researchers continue to study how treatments can be improved in order to reduce side effects and the possibility of the cancer recurring. University of Cincinnati researchers are leading a new clinical trial to examine if the combination of a more localized radiation treatment and immunotherapy can be a better treatment for patients with recurrent head and neck cancer. Chad Zender, MD, said head and neck cancers include cancers of the tongue, throat, tonsil and larynx, and about 30%-50% of patients treated through surgery and radiation will have their cancer return. Patients often then undergo additional surgery and/or radiation treatments, which can lead to side effects like problems with speech and swallowing. “The quality of life is significantly less in the patients that require [subsequent] surgery and then radiation with or without chemo,” said Zender, professor in the Department of Otolaryngology in UC’s College of Medicine, director of head and neck surgery and principal investigator for the new trial. Precision radiation Zender said the trial will test a more localized radiation delivery method through a radioactive seed, about the size of a grain of rice that emits an intense amount of radiation to the cancer and only minimal radiation outside to other areas. The radioactive Cesium-131 seeds are implanted directly into the operative site during surgery. This approach in early studies appears to give more localized radiation [...]