Active clinical trials for "Head and Neck Neoplasms"

Bioelectrical impedance analysis measures body mass (the amount of muscle and fat in the body) and the level of hydration to help researchers identify patients who are losing muscle mass during radiation therapy. This information may help researchers make decisions about nutritional supplementation and the placement of feeding tubes in patients receiving radiation therapy.

This trial studies how well dynamic contrast-enhanced magnetic resonance imaging (DCE-MRI) works in diagnosing osteoradionecrosis in patients with head and neck cancer that is primary, has come back, or has spread to other places in the body who are undergoing radiation therapy. DCE-MRI may help doctors to predict osteoradionecrosis in patient with head and neck cancer undergoing radiation therapy.

HARE-40 is a phase I/II vaccine dose escalation study with two different arms: Arm 1A will perform intrapatient dose escalation in patients with previously treated HPV16+ Head & Neck Cancer using two dose cohorts to establish a safe, tolerable and recommended dose of HPV vaccine. Arm 1B will perform intrapatient dose escalation in patients with advanced HPV16+ cancer (head and neck, anogenital, penile, cervical and other) using a single cohort to establish a safe, tolerable and recommended dose of HPV vaccine.

This study investigates if head and neck squamous cell carcinoma can be tracked with cell-free tumor DNA, RNA or HPV-DNA, in blood samples from patients referred with suspicion of cancer, and if it can be used in detecting recurrence in patients already diagnosed and treated for head and neck squamous cell carcinoma.

A placebo-controlled, randomized study using adjuvant pembrolizumab treatment for one year in order to potentially improve progression free survival in a squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck cohort at high-risk for recurrence.

To develop this objective and easily implementable assessment method of coughing based on acoustic features of voluntary and reflex coughs, there is a primary need in identifying and comparing acoustic cough features in healthy subjects and different disease-related coughs features. Cough is a common reason for seeking medical care. Chronic cough, defined as a cough that has lasted for longer that eight weeks, represents 10-38% of all referrals made to respiratory physicians [1-2]. Furthermore, between 60 and 80% of patients with chronic obstructivepulmonary disease (COPD) report cough. Following this pilot study comparing different populations, the applicability of the selected acoustic cough features should be examined in HNC patients with radiotherapy-induced dysphagia, Another frequent aspect of the clinical diagnostic examination of swallowing is perceptual analysis of voice quality immediately following deglutition. Changes in voice quality are assumed to provide information on the possible accumulation of saliva or food at the vocal folds level. It is reported that a change of voice may indicate laryngeal dysfunction or the presence of a foreign body at the laryngeal level [3] confirm that a normophonic voice after swallowing reflects a lack of aspiration-penetration. However, research shows that there is no strong correlation between aspiration and changes in perceptual voice quality (e.g. wet voice). A more reliable and easily implementable method could be detection of specific acoustic features of changes in voice quality.

Following preliminary studies carried out in our department on these subject and subjective findings during clinical examinations, it has been shown that pain is a symptom that is rarely reported following treatment. Instead, neurosensory disorders such as hypoesthesia and paresthesia are found. The objective of the study is to map and qualitatively evaluate neurosensory disorders in patients treated for cancers of the oral cavity and oropharynx.

Varian Medical Systems has recently deployed a completely novel radiation treatment system called EthosTM, a first-of-its-kind system that allows for daily adapative radiotherapy (DART), such that the treatment for that day can be created on-the-fly based on the patient's current positioning and anatomy. This system is commercially-available and FDA-approved, and UTSW Radiation Oncology has installed two such units. The ability to adjust the dose delivery every day means both that adaptive therapy is possible with every fraction and that the PTV margin can be dramatically reduced/eliminated, since investigators are treating for that day's patient setup. Investigators are therefore proposing a randomized trial using DART with near marginless (ML) setup margins (a 1 mm margin will be retained for intrafractional motion).

A study to investigate feasibility of local selection of patients with squamous cell carcinoma of the pharynx or larynx using anticipated benefit of proton radiotherapy in reducing the risk of late dysphagia or xerostomia.

This Phase III trial aims to: Explore the impact of pre-treatment information and radiation dose redistribution on locoregional control in patients with locally advanced SCCHN. The dose to the primary tumor with margins, based upon PET and CT information, will be inhomogeneously increased to a tumor dose between 70 and 84 Gy with decreasing dose towards the edges of the irradiated area. To determine the toxicity of combined modality treatment (cisplatin) with standard dose distribution versus combined modality treatment (cisplatin) with adaptive inhomogeneous radiation dose distribution.