The Future of Treating Head and Neck Cancer

Hassan Arshad, MD, assistant professor of oncology, head and neck surgeon, Department of Head and Neck Surgery/Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, Roswell Park Cancer Institute, discusses the future of treating head and neck cancer and the challenges associated with the disease.

Clinical Pearls:

• The only thing that has changed the prognosis of the disease significantly is the human papillomavirus (HPV)
• Although surgeries for head and neck cancer patients have gotten smaller, survival rates have essentially stayed the same in the past 20 years
• Moving into the future, physicians are going to attempt to continue to make surgeries smaller and look into alternative ways of treating the disease without causing major functional side effects