It appears that each doctor has his/her own way for the follow-up checks. I was also diagnosed stage IV tonsil cancer. I had surgery, Rad and Chemo. The radical neck dissection removed more than 70 lymph nodes with 4 of them positive. I think the treatment was pretty agreesive and I was OK with it. What concerned me is the follow-up checks. My ENT doctor simply looking into my throat with his naked eye, not even using an endscopy, then felt my neck for possible lump, that's it.

The Rad oncologist ordered CT head, CT neck and chest X-ray at the end of the RAD treament as the baseline INFO, I will be seeing him again next month for another CT neck and CT chest. Nobody ordered blood work, therefore, I asked my primary doctor to do it for me, but I am not sure if the liver fuction test he ordered was appropriate for cancer detection.

I am still confused about the procedure for these follow-up checks. It seems to me that there are standard methods for treatment but there is no standard methods for follow-up.