Hi All,

Check out one of the recent posts on the Oral Cancer on the News page:

http://www.oralcancerfoundation.org/news/story.asp?newsId=954

This study examined outcomes for 151 head and neck patients given IMRT. Bottom line was that IMRT offered excellent outcomes in local-regional control and overall survival. Oropharyngeal cancer patients (base of tongue, soft palate, and tonsils) did the best with a 2-year local-regional control rate of 98%.

From what I've read, there are few studies that have completed that document the outcomes of IMRT. The Anderson MD study from 2004 was one of the first and reviewed 74 patients. Unlike the Anderson study, this one found no significant advantage with patients receiving postoperative radiation versus definitive radiation, nor did it find that the T or N stage had a significant effect on local-regional control. Like the Anderson study, this study found no significant difference in whether the patient had chemotherapy or not.

It seems that when I compare the stats on these two IMRT studies to several of the older conventional radiation studies, the survival outcomes are quite a bit better. And what is up with the chemo results with IMRT -this seems to be showing that chemo doesn't make the survival difference with IMRT that it did with conventional radiation.

Does anyone have any further insight into this?

Connie