All I will add to the discussion at this time is this is not what the ROs at Johns Hopkins told us -- they said properly planned IMRT was the best approach even for Stage IV HNC, which my husband has. In fact they are putting him on the tomo IMRT to better facilitate the radiation targeting and improve results. They do give what they term "prophylactic doses" outside the primary target areas to catch undetected cancer cells.

I will ask the radiation physicist Monday when we meet again to address the issue -- I am not sure if they even do conventional XRT (by which I assume everyone is speaking of 3-D conformal) any more for HNC.

Will report what he says....

Gail