View clinical trials related to Head and Neck Cancer.
Filter by:This clinical trial studies image-guided adaptive radiotherapy in detecting tumors during treatment in patients with head and neck cancer. Image-guided adaptive radiotherapy uses high quality imaging technology to detect the tumor and normal organs during treatment. It is not yet known which imaging technique provides the best image for guidance during treatment with radiation therapy. Comparing results of imaging procedures done before, during, and after radiotherapy may help doctors plan the best 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.
Cone beam CT (computed tomography) is a developing technology which allows CT images to be obtained while a patient is on the radiation treatment table.(A CT scan uses x-rays to produce detailed pictures of structures in the body.) In this study, cone beam CT scans will be obtained before individual radiation treatment sessions for head and neck cancer. The information gathered from these scans will be used by the researchers to look at patient movement as well as changes in the amount of normal and tumor tissue throughout the course of radiation therapy. The researchers will use this information to create hypothetical radiation treatment plans, which will be used as the basis for future research. The cone beam CT scan data will not be used to alter the actual radiation treatment of any of the patients enrolled on the study. In addition, tests of salivary output and swallowing and questionnaires about quality of life will be made to assess how the doses of radiation affect them.
The purpose of this study is to see if a three method risk adapted design using induction chemotherapy, transoral surgery and radiation chemotherapy will lessen toxic effects and make treatment of squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck (SCCHN) better.
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.
The main objective of this study is to determine the feasibility of optimizing the IMRT treatment plan based on dosimeter measurements of mucosal radiation dose adjacent to the dental fillings to reduce such dose to < 35 Gy without compromising tumor coverage and/or increasing the dose to the remaining oral cavity or nearby parotid glands.
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.
Concurrent chemotherapy and radiation therapy (chemoRT) has become the standard of care for treatment of many patients with advanced head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC), though many clinical questions remain. Prior experience has revealed locoregional control (LRC), disease free survival (DFS) and overall survival (OS) at 3 years exceeding 80% after treatment with the use of hyperfractionated intensity modulated radiation therapy (IMRT) and concurrent weekly cisplatin chemotherapy for patients with locally advanced HNSCC. This multi-institutional phase II ZCC00204 trial resulted in an acceptable quality of life (QOL) and toxicity profile. The current trial is an attempt to maintain high LRC, while further minimizing both acute and chronic toxicities, and maximizing QOL.
RATIONALE: Radiation therapy uses high-energy x-rays to kill tumor cells and shrink tumors. Drugs used in chemotherapy, such as cisplatin, work in different ways to stop the growth of tumor cells, either by killing the cells or by stopping them from dividing. Monoclonal antibodies, such as cetuximab, can block tumor growth in different ways. Some block the ability of tumor cells to grow and spread. Others find tumor cells and help kill them or carry tumor-killing substances to them. It is not yet known whether radiation therapy is more effective with cisplatin or cetuximab in treating oropharyngeal cancer. PURPOSE: This phase III trial is studying radiation therapy with cisplatin or cetuximab to see how well it works in treating patients with oropharyngeal cancer.
The goal of this clinical research study is to learn if acupuncture can help to prevent xerostomia (dry mouth) and improve the quality of life in patients who receive radiation treatment to the head and neck. This study will determine if one acupuncture treatment approach is more effective than another. Dry mouth is a common problem among cancer patients who have received radiation treatment to the head and neck.