Importance of the treatment package time in surgery and postoperative radiation therapy for squamous carcinoma of the head and neck

Abstract

A total treatment package time of <100 days is associated with improved tumor control and survival. Every effort should be made to keep the time from surgery to the completion of postoperative RT to <100 days.

Surgery with Complete Resection Improves Survival in Radiooncologically Treated Patients with Cervical Lymph Node Metastases from Cancer of Unknown Primary

“…This improvement of local control after neck dissection was also found in our study. Rosenthal et al, Dietl et al and Herrmann & Baumann described a total treatment time of < 100 days as prognostic, which was not confirmed by this study's results [6,10,26]. The question of chemotherapy application remains controversial [1,5,13,14,16].…”

Effect of process standards on survival of patients with head and neck cancer in the south and west of England

“…The 2-year survival rates for the south and west of England are comparable to those published for the USA (Shirinian et al, 1994;Rosenthal et al, 2002) and the UK (Robin et al, 1991;Woolgar et al, 1999). Since the 'quality' of care in the region appeared to have improved between 1997 and 2000, it was disappointing that this was not reflected in improved survival figures overall.…”

“…Since the 'quality' of care in the region appeared to have improved between 1997 and 2000, it was disappointing that this was not reflected in improved survival figures overall. It is possible that gains achieved by better radiology, endoscopy, staging and multidisciplinary planning were offset by lengthened waiting times for investigation and treatment: 'delays' in treatment have been previously shown to affect survival adversely (Rosenthal et al, 2002).…”

The Role of Chemotherapy in the Management of Patients with Head and Neck Cancer

“…As a result, consensus recommendations, currently endorsed by the National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) Head and Neck Committee, identifies this subgroup of patients at high risk for recurrence, and addition of chemotherapy to adjuvant RT represents the current standard of care. Additional high-risk features included in the eligibility criteria of these trials as well as retrospective analyses undertaken using other data sets (pT3 or pT4 primary, N2 or N3 nodal disease, nodal disease in levels IV or V, perineural invasion, vascular embolism) [13][14][15] can still be considered on a case by case basis in making adjuvant RT versus concurrent chemotherapy and RT recommendations.…”