View clinical trials related to Head and Neck Cancer.
Filter by:Examining if the use of serial pHRMi to identify biomechanical changes in the swallow function of HNC patients treated with radiotherapy.
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.
The purpose of this study is to evaluate the safety and efficacy of the combination of nivolumab plus epacadostat in combination with chemotherapy in first-line recurrent or metastatic patients with squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck (SCCHN) when compared to the standard of care (EXTREME regimen).
This is a research study to test the combination of two drugs, pembrolizumab and epacadostat with the goal of benefiting subjects with head and neck cancers where prior or ongoing regimens with a PD-1 or PD-L1 inhibitor for the treatment of advanced head and neck cancer after platinum failure.
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.
The primary purpose of this study is to see if it is safe to give patients with pancreatic or head and neck cancer a low dose of the FDA approved anesthetic drug ketamine at the same time they receive radiation and/or chemotherapy for their cancer treatment to prevent depression and its effects. Researchers would also like to see if giving ketamine at the same time as cancer treatment is practical and reasonably acceptable to the patient. New onset depression is highly frequent in those with head and neck cancer, and depression has many negative consequences for outcomes in those patients. Depression has been known to have greater incidence in pancreatic cancer patients than in patients with other malignancies. Therefore, investigators would also like to see if giving patients ketamine during their routine cancer treatment will prevent the onset of depression and its negative effects on cancer treatment outcomes, and also help with anxiety, pain, and quality of life. The study will also use a placebo to compare to the good and/or bad effects of ketamine. A placebo is not an active drug and it will be look the same as ketamine, as a liquid to be taken by mouth. Ketamine is approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) as a general anesthetic by itself for some diagnostic and surgical procedures or combined with other general anesthetic agents. It has also been shown to reduce cancer pain. Ketamine is considered experimental in this study because it is not approved by the FDA for the prevention of depression.
The goal of this clinical study is to find out if certain instruments/devices, such as wide field fluorescence imaging point spectroscopy and/or brush cytology, can help health care providers find mouth cancer more quickly than a standard oral clinical exam.
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.
This is a multicenter, interventional, randomized study for preventive and therapeutic strategies for patients with head and neck or Lung cancer; contribution of an addiction support
RATIONALE: Lactobacillus bevis CD2 lozenge may help prevent symptoms of mucositis, or mouth sores, in patients receiving radiation therapy and chemotherapy. This therapy may improve the quality of life of patients with head and neck cancer. PURPOSE: This phase III trial studies how well Lactobacillus bevis CD2 lozenge prevents oral mucositis in patients with head and neck cancer who are being treated with cisplatin and radiation therapy. These results will be compared to results in patients using placebo lozenges.