Brief palliative radiotherapy course for advanced and incurable head and neck cancer

Rasha Hamdy Hamed* and Engy Aboelnaga

Purpose: Palliative radiotherapy schedule for inoperable Squamous cell carcinoma of head and neck (SCCHN) will evaluated in terms of palliation of cancer-related symptoms and acute toxicities.

Materials and Methods: This study included fifty patients with inoperable SCCHN. All patients received 30 Gy / 10 fractions / 5 fractions per week. Treatment-related toxicity was assessed using Radiation Therapy Oncology Group criteria. Cancer-related symptoms were assessed before starting and at the completion of radiotherapy. Tumor response rate was evaluated by standard WHO criteria.

Results: Fifty patients with advanced and incurable HNSCC were enrolled in this study. The majority of patients were, male gender, karnofsky performance status and clinical stage IV. Approximately half of the patients had laryngeal cancer and the most common distressing symptom was pain. All patients had greater than 50% pain, dysphagia, hoarseness of voice and dyspnea relief and 22/25 patients had greater than 50% decrease in the size of neck masses. Overall response rate was 72%. No grade 3 or more acute toxicity was reported. The most common grade 2 acute toxicity was mucositis (n=28, 56%). 

Conclusion: Short course of palliative radiotherapy may be offered for patients with inoperable locally advanced SCCHN, who are unsuitable for other anticancer measures as well as long course radiotherapy. Further large scale multicenter studies in this field are indicated.

Keywords: Palliative radiotherapy; Advanced; Incurable; Head and neck cancer

Published on: Jul 16, 2018 Pages: 14-18

Full Text PDF Full Text HTML DOI: 10.17352/ijrro.000029
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