Active clinical trials for "Head and Neck Neoplasms"

A retrospective chart review of patients receiving concurrent chemoradiotherapy for oropharynx cancer was performed to compare clinical data for patients treated prior to the initiation of the NP clinic with those subsequently seen weekly in the NP clinic. The variables studied included; rate of hospitalization, dose completion and dose reductions. The results revealed an overall improvement in all variables for those patients seen in the weekly NP clinic. To further analyze this data a randomized, prospective study is proposed to validate the findings of the retrospective study. It is predicted that a weekly NP led clinic will decrease costly hospitalizations, increase patient treatment completion and improve overall patient quality of life and satisfaction.

The purpose of this study is to compare the incidence of stomatitis when treating with amifostine before radiation treatment.

RATIONALE: Learning about insomnia and quality of life in patients undergoing chemotherapy and radiation therapy for cancer may help doctors learn about the effects of treatment and plan the best treatment. PURPOSE: This clinical trial is studying insomnia in patients undergoing chemotherapy and radiation therapy for head and neck cancer.

Wound complications, such as salivary-cutaneous fistulas and skin necrosis, result in significant patient morbidity and death. Head and neck wounds are complicated because of multiple tissue layers, critical structures and variable vascularity. When vascularity is compromised, wounds do not heal and can lead to life threatening haemorrhage or morbid infections. The field of microsurgical reconstruction has developed and expanded over the last 20 years to specifically ameliorate these issues. The challenge is that the vascularity of the microsurgical transplant or the recipient tissue bed can have areas of decreased vascularity that cannot be appreciated by the surgeon's intraoperative exam alone. Surgeons would be able to make better decisions with respect to the vascularity if there was an imaging technique that could indicate the vascular supply of the tissues undergoing surgical reconstruction. Laser-assisted indocyanine green fluorescent dye angiography (LA-ICG) using the SPY System (Novadaq Technologies Inc., Richmond, British Columbia, Canada) is an intraoperative vascular imaging technique that improves the ability of a surgeon to assess the vascular supply in the surgical bed. This tool, which is approved by Health Canada for reconstructive surgery, has been used extensively in breast reconstruction and gastrointestinal procedures with encouraging results. The ability to address ischemic tissues intraoperatively could potentially decrease the rate of devastating wound complications in head and neck surgery patients. The objective of this observational study is to assess the effectiveness of LA-ICG in head and neck reconstructive procedures to reduce the rate of skin necrosis and fistula.

This trial is a prospective, monocentric study aiming to evaluate an adaptive radiotherapy method (automatic deformable recontouring on the daily MVCT (MegaVoltage Computerized Tomography)) using the Precise ART™ software in patients with head and neck cancer. Patients will receive helical intensity-modulated radiotherapy (IMRT) according to the standard recommendations (35 fractions during 7 weeks). Radiotherapy will include daily repositioning MVCT. For the study, patients will undergo 4 intermediate re-planning CT-scan (without injection of intravenous contrast agent) at week 3, week 4, week 5 and week 6 of treatment. 3 recontouring modalities will be evaluated for the study: Manuel recontouring (standard method) Precise ART™ deformed contours Precise RTX™ deformed contours The total duration of the study for each patient will be 7 weeks.

Cancers located in the upper aerodigestive tract of the head and neck region present unique management challenges due to the crucial functions in this anatomic region along with its anatomic density. As such, cancers themselves and the actual treatment can affect these functions. Of these, the ability to effectively and safely transport a swallow bolus from the oral cavity to the esophagus is particularly important. This consideration has in fact been a major source of debate regarding the optimal management for head and neck cancers as both oncologic-effective and function-preserving therapies are desired. Accomplishing this therapeutic goal has been elusive and can be attributed to a lack of tools that effectively and longitudinally evaluate swallow function over the course of a treatment and in follow-up. As such, investigators surprisingly lack a clear understanding of the natural history of treatment -related swallow dysfunction (dysphagia) regardless of the treatment modality. As such, understanding the prevalence of this significant complication is in fact not well established. Understanding the true prevalence of treatment-related dysphagia is in fact critical to establish as it will help guide decisions as to whether or not treatment strategies require modification including de-intensification of treatment that is receiving considerable attention for favourable prognosis patients associated with the human papillomavirus (HPV). To address this problem, winvestigators hypothesize that the quantitative and validated patient-reported outcome (PRO) instrument, the Sydney Swallow Questionnaire (SSQ), can be an effective tool to longitudinally measure swallow function to determine the natural history of head and neck cancer treatment-related swallow dysphagia. The SSQ is particularly well suited for longitudinal evaluation of swallow function as it quantifies various aspect of patient-perceived swallow function in contrast to other swallow PROs that measure the impact of swallow function on quality of life domains. To determine the two-year prevalence of dysphagia, investigators will employ a multi-institution prospective study design using our Oncospace® web-portal to facilitate secure prospective data curation and analysis that will include evaluations before, during and following standard of care definitive cancer treatment for a total of 36 months in the follow-up period.

Weight loss resulting from poor food intake is common in head and neck cancer patients. Currently, feeding tubes are placed before starting treatment to provide nutrition and prevent weight loss. However, studies have not always shown that feeding tubes prevent weight loss. Also, limiting food intake by mouth may lead to swallowing problems. The aim of this study is to compare the effect of diet and swallowing therapy with feeding tube placement. In this study, your weight, food intake, swallowing ability, and side-effects of treatment will be monitored before, during, and 3 and 6 months after treatment to see if there is any difference between the therapy groups. The investigators hope that with the addition of diet and swallowing therapy during treatment that we can improve food intake and swallowing ability while still maintaining weight.

RATIONALE: Studying samples of tumor tissue from patients with cancer in the laboratory may help doctors learn more about changes that occur in DNA and identify biomarkers related to cancer. PURPOSE: This research study is looking at tissue samples in predicting oral cancer in patients who have undergone neck dissection for oral cancer.

The prospective trial is to describe the quality of life and psychological effects in patients with head and neck tumor receiving curative intent treatment

Given the lack of evidence for the benefit of particle therapy in relevant cases, he investigators proposed an in silico trial to investigate the dosimetric effect of contour changes for OAR as well as tumor during chemoradiation in H&N patients. Photon and proton-therapy will be compared based on dosimetric data on 7 time points during treatment combined with plan robustness. In that way the investigators will be able to assess and compare the optimal timing for replanning for photon and proton therapy. A database of the University of Pennsylvania (Upenn) consists of 10 patients with head and neck tumors treated with chemo-radiation. Contrast-enhanced CT scans were acquired prior and during RT (T1-T7)