Intensity-modulated radiotherapy extends survival in head and neck cancer

The American Society for Radiation Oncology’s 2013 annual meeting, showed that intensity-modulated radiotherapy administered to patients with head and neck cancer extends cancer-specific survival compared with other radiotherapy methods.

With advanced technological features, intensity-modulated radiotherapy is a highly precise and advanced radiotherapy method that delivers radiation doses to a tumor or a targeted area of the body. Before the radiation dose is applied to the targeted area, the radiation intensity is adjusted and the target is defined according to a three-dimensional image obtained from the relevant area. In this way, damage to normal tissues is minimized. Unlike other radiotherapy methods that deliver a single radiation beam, it divides the radiation it delivers into thousands of thin beams, enabling radiation to enter the body from many angles. All these beams entering from different angles intersect in the cancerous area, allowing less radiation to be delivered to normal tissues and providing radiation directly to the relevant area. Intensity-modulated radiotherapy, which delivers a high dose of radiation to the targeted area, may be administered to cancer patients for various reasons. It may be used to provide a second treatment opportunity for cancer patients who have previously received radiotherapy but did not achieve sufficient results, or to treat cancerous areas near sensitive organs such as the eye, the final part of the large intestine, and the prostate more safely. For this reason, intensity-modulated radiotherapy has been a preferred method in recent years, particularly for head and neck cancers.

To investigate cancer development and its effects on patients’ survival, cancer patients treated with intensity-modulated radiotherapy and other radiotherapy methods from 1999 to 2007 were examined. The results showed that the different radiotherapy methods administered to the patients did not create a difference in survival. However, with the increase in intensity-modulated radiotherapy applications and the number of specialists in this field in recent years, positive results have been observed, particularly in the treatment of patients with head and neck cancer.

The study, whose results were announced at the 2013 annual meeting of the American Society for Radiation Oncology, included 3172 patients with head and neck cancer. While 1056 of these patients were treated with intensity-modulated radiotherapy, 2116 patients received other radiotherapy methods. As a result of the examination, overall survival in patients who received intensity-modulated radiotherapy was determined to be an average of 40 months. Cancer-specific survival in patients treated with the intensity-modulated radiotherapy method was observed to be %84.1, while this rate was determined to be %66 in patients who received other radiotherapy methods. This showed that the intensity-modulated radiotherapy method extended cancer-specific survival by an average of %18. This method, which applies radiotherapy to the targeted area and thereby minimizes side effects by causing less damage to normal tissues, may also enable positive results to be achieved in cancer treatment. For all these reasons, it can be said that intensity-modulated radiotherapy should be used as the standard treatment for head and neck cancer.

In the treatment of head and neck cancer, patients experience long-term side effects such as difficulty speaking and swallowing, dry mouth, and dental complications, and these side effects are quite distressing for the patient. For this reason, many oncologists want to reduce side effects as much as possible when administering cancer treatment to their patients. Although intensity-modulated radiotherapy requires more time and cost than conventional radiotherapy methods, the positive results achieved in the treatment of patients with head and neck cancer with intensity-modulated radiotherapy (covered by the Social Security Institution) and the treatment-related reduction in side effects are not negligible.