The treatment of oral cancer: an overview for dental professionals

Abstract

Oral cancer is a serious life-threatening disease. Dental professionals may be the first individuals to identify ⁄ suspect these lesions before referring to oral and maxillofacial surgeons and oral medicine specialists. Because the general dentist will likely follow on with the patient's future oral health, it is important that he or she has a basic understanding of the various treatments involved in treating oral malignancies and their respective outcomes. The four main modalities discussed in this review include surgery alone, radiotherapy alone, surgery with radiotherapy, and chemotherapy with or without surgery and radiotherapy. Chemotherapy has become an area of great interest with the introduction of new 'targeted therapies' demonstrating promising results in conjunction with surgery. Despite these results, the toxicities associated with chemotherapy regimens are frequent and can be severe, and therefore may not be suitable for all patients. Treatment modalities have improved significantly over the decades with overall decreases in recurrence rates, improved disease-free and overall survival, and an improved quality of life. Prognosis, however, is still ultimately dependent on the clinical stage of the tumour at the initial diagnosis with respect to size, depth, extent, and metastasis as recurrence rates and survival rates plummet with disease progression.

An orthotopic and osteolytic model with a newly established oral squamous cell carcinoma cell line

“…Even if the original cancer is removed by surgery or radiation therapy, the disease sometimes recurs because it had spread. 10 The most common sites of cancers of the mouth and oral cavity are the floor of the mouth, the pharynx including the soft palate, the lips and the tongue.…”

Psychological characteristics versus swallowing and speech rehabilitation efficiency in patients after oral cavity cancer excision

“…Ich życie wciąż może być zagrożone pomimo tego, iż poddali się okaleczającej operacji i uzupełniającej radioterapii. Po zabiegu operacyjnym w różnym stopniu doświadczają deficytów funkcjonalnych w zakresie oddychania, żucia, połykania i mowy, a także trudności psychologicznych i społecznych związanych z niepeł-nosprawnością oraz zmienionym wyglądem twarzy [1,2,3,4,5,6]. Często towarzyszy temu lęk przed nawrotem choroby [7].…”

“…Their lives may still be threatened despite the fact they had been subjected to a distorting surgery and complementary radiotherapy. After the surgery patients may experience various functional deficits in terms of breathing, chewing, swallowing, and speech, as well as psychological and social problems due to their disability or unfavourable appearance to a varying degree [1,2,3,4,5,6]. These are often accompanied by the fear of recurrence [7].…”

Overexpression of ADAM9 in oral squamous cell carcinoma

“…In Thailand, oral cancer is the sixth most common type of cancer, and there were 3,689 new cases diagnosed in 2012 (1). The conventional treatment for oral cancer includes surgical and radiation therapy, with or without adjuvant chemotherapy (3,4), but the five-year survival rate for patients with OSCC remains low, depending on the Tumor-Node-Metastasis (TNM) staging (5). Consequently, a 'targeted therapy' has been introduced as a possible and adjuvant treatment for patients with cancer (6).…”