Head and neck cancer treatment: An overview

Abstract

The advance head and neck cancers are most difficult for treatment. The newer approaches for the treatment being systemic chemotherapy combined with radiotherapy. Chemotherapy offers several advantages in metastatic head and neck cancers. The main choice for the systemic chemotherapy being platinum containing compounds (drugs), Taxanes, in recent years have shown to be promising and being included in the neo-adjuvant and concomitant therapy regimes. Further, targeted agents such as epidermal growth factor receptor inhibitors (EGFRIs) have proven to be beneficial in concomitant and metastatic therapies.