Onkológia 3/2021

Current trends in surgery of head and neck cancer

The management of head and neck cancer has undergone a major paradigm shift during the past period. We have observed a decline in use of open surgery as the initial treatment for selected patients mostly with squamous cell carcinoma of the larynx and pharynx. These changes are due to an increasing role of minimally invasive surgical approaches (transoral laser microsurgery and transoral robotic surgery) and effective non-surgical treatment modalities, such as chemoradiotherapy. However, open surgery remains the optimal first-line treatment modality for many other tumors, including tumors of the oral cavity, sinonasal cavities, salivary and thyroid glands, skull base, and skin malignancies and their regional nodal metastasis. An important proportion of open surgery represents salvage surgery following unsuccessful chemoradiotherapy.

Keywords: head and neck cancer, minimally invasive surgery, open surgery