I just wish to echo what was posted first to yours. ACC is one of the rarer oral cancers. Treating it is unique and there are new research papers out in the last year that offer new isights and alternatives. This is NOT a cancer type that should be treated at a small regional hospital with a cancer wing in it. He needs to be seen by a TEAM at a comprehensive cancer center. The reason is straight forward. They have the most experience, especially when it comes to something that is infrequent in incidence. They have the latest clinical trials, likely available as this cancer has been needing a highly targeted and specific approach for many years. So think of a CCC hospital as one that ONLY treats cancer. Two that are always competing for the number one spot in the US are MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, and Memorial Sloan Kettering in NYC.

If one of the big cancer only hospitals is not possible for a variety of reasons, usually that your insurance will not let you travel out of your geographic service area unless you lobby/argue with them for treatment that is not available within your service area, then the next step is a teaching hospital, like UCLA, Penn, others that see huge numbers of patients, and also need to be on the cutting edge of knowledge since they are both treating and teaching it, and have a large number of staff that are also involved in research.

The rarer oral cancers ACC and MEC while they may seem small and often isolated to the salivary glands, metastasize to other areas through means different that the way most common SCC squamous cell carcinomas do not typically use. The most common route can be perineurial invasion, traveling along a nerve to a place remote from the original location. This is one of their biggest dangers.

Please convince him that time is of the essence in dealing with this. Small in regular oral cancers means early, easier to eradicate. Not in ACC. He needs to accept this, and and get involved in a treatment center soon. Keeping it private is his prerogative, but fear of treatments keeps some people in delay mode, so please do your best to get him past these things. If you do not have a CCC near you, then I suggest that you look at this link to a very unbiased rating system of cancer treatment hospitals. It is put out annually and rates institutions on a ton of different criteria, from end results to staff education, to modernness of equipment, doctor nurse to patient ratios and more. It is searchable by zip codes and you can see what is closest to you that has a number rating that shows them to be a great institution. We keep the link in our resources section of the main OCF web site.

https://oralcancerfoundation.org/resources/best-hospitals-ratings/

Last edited by Brian Hill; 12-28-2021 09:29 PM.

Brian, stage 4 oral cancer survivor. OCF Founder and Director. The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality. The last is to say thank you. In between, the leader is a servant.