Hi Bill, welcome to the boards.

I'll tell you my experience. I choose IMRT because I'm 33, and wanted to keep saliva function for the many, many years that I aim to stay alive. I had 33 treatments over the winter and things went great. I bounced back quickly in terms of taste, saliva (though it's still pretty dry at night) and eating. But they discovered more cancer in a lymph node in May -- JUST below the area that the IMRT covered.

So the radiation seemed to do the trick, it's just that they weren't aggressive enough in radiating all of my lymph nodes (just the upper part of the neck). One caveat: they can use IMRT again with me to cover the lower neck now. They still consider me a candidate for cure.

If you are a candidate for IMRT, I would encourage you to consider it. But I would also relay to your docs my story. Make sure they are acting as aggressively as possible in terms of coverage. I think my doc learned a thing or two from me...

Looking back, I have no regrets about choosing IMRT. I do have questions though why my docs didn't cover the whole chain of lymph nodes in my neck... Didn't realize at the time that they weren't...