I originally started with an Oral Surgeon (it is my impression that Oral Surgeons are on the "dental" side of the house and ENTs are on the medical side of the house) for suspicious lesions under my tongue -- At one point, while traveling, my InsCo didn't like me selfreferring my self to an oral surgeon (didn't have any in the state I was in on their list) so I went to an ENT. Been doing that ever since.

Since my recent tumor removal finally resulted in clear margins, I am having radiation but not chemo as a preventative measure. Since there is no medical oncologist (MO) involved, the ENT is by default taking the role of Ringmaster for the entire treatment. Based on history with Oral Surg and ENTs, I expect I will be seeing my ENT at least every six months forever.

Because I travel a lot, I have gathered all of the pertinent pathology reports, etc., and now even my CT scans on disk, so if I am somewhere else, I don't have to start a new ENT from scratch just looking in my mouth. My current ENT said that I should consider myself one of the "experts" in my treatment.

BTW, I have already applied the philosophy in the above paragraph to my other medical work. I keep paper or computer copies of all my lab work and keep a running summary on a few sheets of paper of pertinent stuf like cholesterol, BP, thyroid, PSA, etc. so a new doc (or even a current one) isn't wasting time shuffling thru a fistful of lab reports -- He/she has the numbers and trends right on one sheet for one kind of test.

Pete