Adverse Events Associated With Concurrent Chemoradiation Therapy in Patients With Head and Neck Cancer

Abstract

Patients receiving CRT experience a substantial number of treatment-related adverse events, primarily affecting oropharyngeal and laryngeal function, with improvement noted for the current IMRT protocol. Improving dental prosthetic rehabilitation and including evaluations with speech and swallowing pathologists before and during treatment may enhance patient outcomes.

Quality of life outcomes of transoral robotic surgery with or without adjuvant therapy for oropharyngeal cancer

“…Clearly, side effects of adjuvant therapy such as xerostomia, odynophagia, and oral thrush play an important role in the lower QOL scores in the eating domain among adjuvant therapy patients. Overall, the results presented substantiate findings of recent studies that reported superior QOL outcomes in patients who underwent TORS alone and decreased QOL with adjuvant therapy with comparable clinical outcomes …”

Incidence of hospitalization in patients with head and neck cancer treated with intensity‐modulated radiation therapy

“…Reasons for acute hospitalization in our study included dehydration/poor PO intake/failure to thrive (19.7%), oral pain and/or mucositis (10.9%), nausea/vomiting (7.5%), and neutropenic fever (6.1%). Our percentages are slightly lower for most admission diagnoses compared with those reported by Givens et al in their recent study of 104 patients with head and neck cancer who underwent concurrent CRT. Givens et al found that 26.9% of patients were hospitalized or required out‐patient intravenous fluids for nausea/vomiting, 26.0% were hospitalized for dehydration or malnutrition, 18.3% were hospitalized for severe fever, and 9.6% were hospitalized for mucositis.…”

“…Our percentages are slightly lower for most admission diagnoses compared with those reported by Givens et al in their recent study of 104 patients with head and neck cancer who underwent concurrent CRT. Givens et al found that 26.9% of patients were hospitalized or required out‐patient intravenous fluids for nausea/vomiting, 26.0% were hospitalized for dehydration or malnutrition, 18.3% were hospitalized for severe fever, and 9.6% were hospitalized for mucositis. The lower number of admissions found in our study may be due to the fact that only 120 of our patients (81.6%) received concurrent CRT, whereas all of the patients received combined CRT in the Givens et al study.…”

Treatment complications and survival in advanced laryngeal cancer: A population-based analysis

“…Acute, often severe treatment‐related toxicities leading to the interruption or modification of RT delivery may compromise the value of CTRT, particularly among older patients and those with coexisting medical conditions or decreased performance status . Although our study demonstrated that a greater proportion of CTRT patients experienced RT‐related toxicities including mucositis, xerostomia, and dysphagia, the proportion of patients experiencing esophageal stricture requiring dilation, esophagitis, sepsis, pneumonia, or thrombosis did not differ significantly between the groups.…”