Active clinical trials for "Head and Neck Neoplasms"

The goal of this research study is to look for factors that influence whether or not head and neck cancer patients follow the swallowing exercises that they are asked to perform while receiving radiation treatment.

This study is looking at treating cancer pain in head and neck cancer. Patients are asked in outpatients to score their worst pain on a scale of 0 to 10 in the last 24 hours. Those with a pain score of 4 and above are randomised into the study. Patients are allocated to continue with their current care (control group) or to be reviewed by the pain/palliative care team (intervention group). At baseline questionnaires are completed on level of pain, type of pain, quality of life and anxiety/depression. Information is also collected on the analgesia they've used in the past month and basic health economics (GP/hospital visits related to pain management and treatment). Follow up in the trial is for 3 months and consists of questionnaires as above and further collection of information on analgesic usage and health economics.

This study evaluates the skin toxicities in patients with epidermoid cancer, treated by Radiotherapy in association with Cetuximab.

This is a randomized, open controlled multicenter phase II clinical study. The SPSS statistical software estimation of sample size, selection of the initial treatment of locally advanced head and neck squamous cell carcinoma in 120 patients, such as to achieve the desired results, considering expanding the clinical, according to the proportion of 1:1 were randomly divided into two groups, all patients were taken, docetaxel + cisplatin 2 cycles of induction chemotherapy 、Concurrent chemoradiotherapy（tomotherapy+cisplatin）, The experimental group was added with AVASTIN.

The concurrent use of chemotherapy during radiation therapy (CCRT) is now the important treatment stratagem for locally advanced head and neck cancer or nasopharyngeal cancer (NPC). For these cases, 5-Fluorouracil (5-FU) and cisplatin (CDDP) are the most commonly used agents of CCRT. It plays an important role to improve the treatment outcome and increases the opportunities for organ preservation. In the past, Radiotherapy (RT) was solely used as a local treatment and its effect was estimated by local effect model. However, growing evidence shows that irradiation has direct DNA damage-dependent effects as well as sending signals to neighboring cells. Recently, the investigators reported that abdominal irradiation could significantly modulate the systemic pharmacokinetics of 5-FU at 0.5 Gy, off-target area in clinical practice, and at 2 Gy, the daily treatment dose for target treatment in an experimental rat model. Additionally, the results from a clinical investigation showed that colorectal cancer patients with lower AUC of 5-FU during adjuvant chemotherapy had lower disease-free survival. Taken together, these lines of evidence support the importance and necessity to search for the mediators responsible for the unexpected effect of local RT on systemic pharmacokinetics of chemotherapeutic agents, such as 5-FU. In the present study, the investigators examined whether the phenomena and mechanism of RT-PK(pharmacokinetics) is a fact for different anticancer drugs and for different part in human.

Mucositis and xerostomia are the most common complications of head and neck (H&N) irradiation, and the combination of chemotherapy and radiation therapy is associated with a significantly higher rate of complications. Mucositis usually develops during the second or third week of a course of standard radiotherapy, and the pain it causes peaks between the third and last week of treatment. The pain then persists for at least one month following the completion of therapy, and may be so overwhelming that it prevents patients from swallowing food and fluids. The patient is therefore at a risk to develop malnutrition, and must be treated vigorously. In this respect, the use of gastrostomy tubes (PEG) has been shown to be beneficial. Completion of the full course of irradiation, without interruption, is important for achieving best possible results in cancer of the H&N. It is therefore essential to identify and refer patients at risk to receive effective and timely nutritional intervention. Since mucositis represents a clinical continuum which differs between patients, it is difficult to assess before-hand which patients will be at risk. There is no simple laboratory tool available, which could predict which patients are susceptible to develop severe mucositis and dysphagia, and eventually will require a feeding gastrostomy. The first phase of mucositis, inflammation, results in the production of pro-inflammatory cytokines such as interleukin-1 (IL-1) and tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-α). In general, the inflammatory cytokines IL-1, interleukin-6 (IL-6) and TNF-α are elevated in inflammatory conditions and are found in increased levels in blood and tissue fluid during inflammation, while anti-inflammatory cytokines are produced in a decreased manner. The main purpose of this study is to find the best indicators and prognosticators of mucositis occurring in the healthy oral tissues of H&N cancer patients receiving treatment, and to understand the cytokines balance mechanism of action. Assuming there is a correlation between high cytokines levels during inflammation and the severity of radiation induced mucositis, finding these prognostic factors may help us predict during the first part of the treatment the need for PEG, placing it prior to the complications associated with severe mucositis on one hand, and avoiding unnecessary procedures on the other hand.

The goal of this research study is to help patients complete the swallowing and dental care exercises they are supposed to perform during radiation treatment.

This study aims to improve the peri- and postoperative care regimen for patients undergoing microvascular reconstruction after head and neck cancer by introducing an enhanced recovery after surgery (ERAS) programme.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the feasibility of using open masks or no masks in combination with optical surface scanning for radiotherapy in patients with head and neck cancer.

Phase II and III studies have demonstrated IMRT to be safe and standard practice for head and neck cancers treated with radiotherapy. This study will be an extension to an earlier, in-house, trial to allow continued recording of toxicities and outcomes in patients receiving IMRT for head and neck cancers. This study will allow us to examine radiobiological modelling for normal tissue complication probability and in particular, determining the dose threshold for parotid glands. Our primary objective is to assess the potential effectiveness of intensity-modulated radiotherapy (IMRT) in reducing xerostomia in head and neck cancer patients and determining threshold dose for whole parotid gland and superficial lobes of parotid glands