robotic surgery – Page 3 – Oral Cancer News

Head and Neck Cancers Linked to HPV are on the Rise

Source: The Wall Street Journal A form of head and neck cancer associated with the sexually transmitted human papillomavirus is on the rise, especially in men, the WSJ reports. Fast-rising rates of oropharyngeal cancer — tumors in the tonsil and back-of-the-tongue area — have been linked to changes in sexual behavior that include the increased practice of oral sex and a greater number of sexual partners. But HPV-positive cancer has also been reported in individuals who report few or no sexual partners. It may also be possible for the virus to be transmitted to an infant via an infected mother’s birth canal. An HPV vaccine is routinely recommended for girls because the virus can cause cervical cancer. The rise in HPV-positive head and neck cancers is leading to a new focus both on treatment of the disease, and whether recommending routine vaccination for boys could prevent oral infections and cancers. (A CDC advisory panel said in 2009 that it was fine for boys to get the vaccine, but recommended against routine administration.) Eric Genden, chief of head and neck oncology at Mt. Sinai Medical Center, tells the Health Blog that when treated appropriately, patients with HPV-positive cancers have an 85% to 90% disease-free survival rate over five years. By contrast, patients with HPV-negative head and neck cancers, which are often associated with smoking and drinking, typically have more advanced disease when the cancer is detected and face a five-year survival rate of only 25% to 40%, Genden says. HPV-induced head [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2011-05-31T11:00:57-07:00May, 2011|Oral Cancer News|

Mayo Clinic finds robotic surgery effective for removing hard-to-reach throat cancer

Source: www.eurekalert.org Author: press release Robotic surgery has become a mainstream tool for removing an ever-increasing variety of head and neck tumors. Now, a team of head and neck surgeons from Mayo Clinic has found robotic surgery can treat cancer in the narrow, hard-to-reach area beyond the tongue at the top of the voice box. Some patients were able to avoid further treatment with chemotherapy or radiation, and most could resume normal eating and speaking. "We've known it's useful for tongue base and tonsil cancers, but we wanted to assess its effectiveness in the larynx," says Kerry Olsen, M.D., Mayo Clinic otolaryngologist and senior author of the study that was presented April 29 at the Combined Otolaryngological Spring Meetings in Chicago. The investigation of transoral robotic surgery (TORS) followed nine patients for up to three years following removal of supraglottic squamous cell carcinoma, which affects the area of the larynx above the vocal cords. Most of the patients had advanced-stage disease. The results showed TORS effectively removed cancer, with "clean," disease-free margins, and was easier to perform than the approach of transoral laser microsurgery via a laryngoscope. The patients also underwent the surgical removal of their adjacent neck nodes at the same operation. "We were pleased with the cancer outcomes," Dr. Olsen says. "We also found patients had minimal trouble after surgery, in most cases resuming normal eating, swallowing and speaking." With TORS, the robotic arms that enter the mouth include a thin camera, an arm with a cautery or [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2011-04-30T16:14:07-07:00April, 2011|Oral Cancer News|

Robotic tongue cancer surgery-Mayo Clinic

Source: www.theze.cn Author: staff Fighting cancer is not easy. Chemotherapy, radiation and surgery can be very hard on your body. Take head and neck cancers, for example. These tumors are often hard to reach. Doctors have to cut through bones such as your jaw to reach them. Now, doctors at Mayo Clinic are using robots to access these cancers through your mouth, leaving face bones intact.

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2010-12-28T08:53:46-07:00December, 2010|Oral Cancer News|

A shifting paradigm for patients with head and neck cancer: transoral robotic surgery (TORS)

Source: www.cancernetwork.com Author: Amy Y. Chen, MD, MPH, FACS This paper by Drs. Bhayani, Holsinger, and Lai describes a new approach to an old problem. Advances in the management of head and neck cancer over the past few decades have been made predominantly in the area of non-surgical therapy. Starting with the Veterans Affairs Cooperative Trial for laryngeal cancer in the early 1990’s,[1] advances in the administration of chemotherapy and radiation therapy have enabled patients to forego traditional extensive resections that compromised speech and swallowing function.[2] The advances in combined chemoradiation for advanced head and neck cancer have come with a detriment to some patients in survival and quality of life.[3] Effective treatment, but with decreased morbidity was needed. Robotic surgery is one treatment that, in combination with chemotherapy and radiation, as needed, is yielding comparable oncologic outcomes while preserving speech and swallowing function. The authors detail the history of robotic surgery well. In short, the current daVinci system functions as a master-slave robot, with the surgeon manipulating instruments connected by a cable network to the robotic cart. Three arms exist (one for the camera and two accommodate 8mm and 5mm instruments). The camera enables not only magnification but also three dimensional viewing of the surgical field. The advantage of using robotic arms is the ability to reach locations that were previously not reachable without a mandibulotomy and/ or pharyngotomy. Stage III and IV cancers of the head and neck consist of primary tumors of all sizes. The major determinant [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2010-10-26T09:00:26-07:00October, 2010|Oral Cancer News|

Robotic surgery breakthrough helping Valley throat and mouth cancer patients

Source: www.abc15.com Author: Jodie Heisner A breakthrough surgery helping those with mouth and throat cancer is being offered by a surgeon right here in the Valley (Mesa, AZ). “It’s nice when about every few years something comes along that’s really a giant step,” said Dr. Glen Rothman of Banner Desert Medical Center. That giant step is being taken with small robotic arms and 3-D imaging. The procedure is done without the doctor even touching you. “Truly the ability to go through the mouth where my hands and my eyes cannot see, with tiny instrumentation and remove tumors in ways that really just did not exist before this technology,” said Dr. Rothman. The procedure is helping patients with mouth and throat cancers similar to the type Michael Douglas is fighting. “It is my understanding that he has squamous cell cancer of his tongue base and that is one of the areas where the daVinci robot could really be used,” said Dr. Rothman. Douglas has opted for chemotherapy and radiation to treat the disease, but for those that choose the surgery with the daVinci robot there are benefits. Without the robot the surgery involves cutting through the jaw leaving scarring. Typically patients are in the hospital for at least eight days. “We do it though the mouth with no incisions on the outside. Just a couple days in the hospital, none of those tubes, no external scars and a much faster, easier recovery,” said Dr. Rothman. It also helps to eliminate many [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2010-09-21T12:34:10-07:00September, 2010|Oral Cancer News|

Robot gives surgeons another weapon against throat cancer

Source: www.star-telegram.com Author: Jan Jarvis It started with hoarseness that refused to go away. Then swallowing became difficult. Within a month, Madonna Griffin could no longer eat. By the time she finally learned what was causing the hoarseness, she could barely breathe. It took Dr. Yadro Ducic just one look down her throat to identify the cause. A 2-inch tumor was growing in the 38-year-old Azle grandmother's larynx, blocking her airway. "I could look down her throat and see this big cancer," said Ducic, co-medical director of the Skull Base Center at Baylor All Saints Medical Center in Fort Worth. "But the voice box was obstructing the view." To remove the tumor, Ducic turned to the da Vinci Surgical System, which gave him a much better view of the throat from different angles. "The nice thing about the robot is you can see around the corner so you can operate around the corner," he said. "It allows you to take out things you can't otherwise." The May 21 operation is believed to be the first such throat surgery in North Texas using the da Vinci Surgical System and was performed less than six months after the federal Food and Drug Administration approved the procedure, according to Baylor All Saints officials. A week later, UT Southwestern Medical Center surgeons performed the same robotic surgery on a patient in Dallas. The transoral robotic surgery is an alternative to the conventional approach using lasers to remove throat tumors. For the nearly 13,000 people [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2010-07-20T07:28:47-07:00July, 2010|Oral Cancer News|

Robotic tongue cancer surgery-Mayo Clinic

Fighting cancer is not easy. Chemotherapy, radiation and surgery can be very hard on your body. Take head and neck cancers, for example. These tumors are often hard to reach. Doctors have to cut through bones such as your jaw to reach them. Now, doctors at Mayo Clinic are using robots to access these cancers through your mouth, leaving face bones intact.

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2010-04-26T19:14:12-07:00April, 2010|Oral Cancer News|

Transoral robotic surgery gets FDA approval

Source: Medgadget Author: Staff The FDA has given the go ahead for surgeons to use robotic surgery for procedures in the throat and nearby regions by going through the mouth. In effect, this is a new indication for the Da Vinci Surgical System from Intuitive Medical, as it is the only robot of its type that can be used to perform the procedures. The transoral applications of robotic surgery have been developed at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, where a special center was created to study the subject. Drs. Gregory S. Weinstein and Bert W. O’Malley, Jr. of the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine’s Department of Otorhinolaryngology: Head and Neck Surgery founded the world’s first TransOral Robotic Surgery (TORS) program at Penn Medicine in 2004, where they developed and researched the TORS approach for a variety of robotic surgical neck approaches for both malignant and benign tumors of the mouth, voice box, tonsil, tongue and other parts of the throat. Since 2005, approximately 350 Penn patients have participated in the world’s first prospective clinical trials of TORS. Head and neck tumor treatments often involve a combination of surgery, radiation therapy, and chemotherapy. In many cases, surgery offers the greatest chance of cure; yet conventional surgery may require an almost ear-to-ear incision across the throat or splitting the jaw, resulting in speech and swallowing deficits for patients. In comparison, the minimally invasive TORS approach, which accesses the surgical site through the mouth, has been shown to improve long term [...]

Charlotte Parker2010-01-15T19:49:17-07:00January, 2010|Oral Cancer News|

FDA clears transoral robotic surgery – developed at Penn –for tumors of mouth, throat and voice box

Source: www.healthcanal.com Author: staff A minimally invasive surgical approach developed by head and neck surgeons at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine has been cleared by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The da Vinci Surgical System (Intuitive Surgical, Inc., Sunnyvale, California) has been cleared for TransOral Otolaryngology surgical procedures to treat benign tumors and selected malignant tumors in adults. Drs. Gregory S. Weinstein and Bert W. O’Malley, Jr. of the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine’s Department of Otorhinolaryngology: Head and Neck Surgery founded the world’s first TransOral Robotic Surgery (TORS) programat Penn Medicine in 2004, where they developed and researched the TORS approach for a variety of robotic surgical neck approaches for both malignant and benign tumors of the mouth, voice box, tonsil, tongue and other parts of the throat. Since 2005, approximately 350 Penn patients have participated in the world’s first prospective clinical trials of TORS. These research trials compromise the largest and most comprehensive studies of the technology on record. “TORS has dramatically improved the way we treat head and neck cancer patients, completely removing tumors while preserving speech, swallowing, and other key quality of life issues,” said Bert O’Malley, Jr., MD, professor and chairman of Penn Medicine’s Department of Otorhinolaryngology:Head and Neck Surgery. “It is very exciting that a concept conceived at PENN, evaluated in pre-clinical experimental models at Penn, tested in clinical trials at Penn, and then taught to key surgeons and institutions both within the U.S. and internationally has been officially [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2009-12-19T23:10:00-07:00December, 2009|Oral Cancer News|

Doctors pleased with robotic technique

Source: www.postbulletin.com Author: staff People heal faster with robotic throat-cancer surgery and have no major complications, Mayo Clinic research shows. The part of the throat behind the mouth can be difficult to reach for surgeons, says a Mayo statement. Surgery for throat tumor removal typically requires a hospital stay of seven to 10 days. But researchers say using a "da Vinci robotic surgical system" instead of traditional surgery led to average hospital stays of 2.3 days for 45 patients studied. Robotic surgery is now Mayo's "technique of choice" after more than 100 such procedures, Moore said. "The results of this research were even more positive than we expected. We found great advantages to using transoral robotic surgery for tonsil and base-of-the-tongue cancers," said head and neck surgeon Dr. Eric Moore.

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2009-03-07T23:20:33-07:00March, 2009|Oral Cancer News|