Health Tips - Head and Neck Cancer

Examples of head and neck cancer include: tongue cancer, jaw cancer, cancer of the voice box, cancer of the sinuses. Really any part of the head and neck can be a potential site for a cancer.

Cause is not necessarily the best word to use for really any kind of cancer. We typically like to characterize them by risk factors. The reason is that if someone does action A, it does not always lead to cancer. If someone does not do action A it does not mean they will not get cancer. But typically for head and neck cancers the major risk factors that we discuss are tobacco, alcohol and the synergetic effect of tobacco and alcohol. Whether it be chewing tobacco, smoking, chronic alcoholism. One of the things we always recommend to our patients is to stop doing these things. We know nowadays that smoking and tobacco usage is a very, very large risk factor for not just head and neck cancer but lung cancer as well. The same has been shown for alcohol as well. Nowadays also, we've also found with certain cancers of the head and neck, the human papilloma virus as well can be a risk factor. 

Anytime that you begin developing a symptom or some kind of finding that wasn't quite there before, I always tell people to have a very low threshold to go see your physician. Depending on the part of your head or neck that's involved by the cancer, the symptoms could be entirely different. For many people they may develop some lumps and bumps in the neck, enlarged lymph nodes for example. For some people they may develop sores on the tongue if maybe they have an early tongue cancer, or a sore inside the mouth that just quite won't go away. For some folks that have voice box cancers, they may notice that swallowing is a little bit different. Their voice is hoarse and it's more than just a common cold.

As with any cancer, if the cancers are caught at earlier stages and we can intervene quicker, then patients will do better in the survival and the outcomes will be much greater. Typically like any other cancer, I think the earlier you recognize, the earlier you move forward with treatment, patients will do better. Now, as far as prognosis goes, my personal philosophy is not to give hard numbers for prognosis. The reason is, I think again there are lots of studies out there, there are lots of graphs and charts and statistics you can read, but for an individual patient, you are one. You are not 600 people you are not 1,000 people. The reason I mention that is because whenever you look at these studies with different curves that say so and so cancer has a X % chance of survival, to a single patient that doesn't mean anything.

Well they're finding that the HPV virus is being linked to certain cancer. In the head and neck the one subside that it is strongly linked to is what we call the oral pharynx. The back of your tongue, the tonsils, and again the exact reason, they don't know. But what's being found, and again similar to why women get pap smears to screen for cervical cancer is that the HPV virus can cause certain changes in that particular area which can lead to cancers. The good news is though that if a cancer in the back of the mouth is associated with HPV, typically the prognosis is more favorable than someone who has a HPV negative cancer. 

The best way to screen for head and neck cancer is to have regular visits with your primary care doctor and your dentist. The reason I say these two is because dentists are often times the first line professionals that will find different growths and different abnormalities in a persons mouth. Being that the mouth is one of the most common locations of head and neck cancer, dentists are fantastic people because they will find them and at the end of the day a lot of the guidelines say that we should be seeing dentists for routine screenings and cleanings at least once or twice a year.

Again, seeing your primary care doctor is of upmost importance because they will be checking your general health, and if anything is abnormal they're the ones that can then say okay, maybe you need to have this test or maybe you need to see this person. Typically as a cancer surgeon a patient isn't' coming to me regularly until they either have a diagnosis or until they have a finding that's concerning enough that it needs to be intervened on.