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Treatments
Oropharyngeal cancer requires specialized training and expertise. At Stanford Health Care, our specialists have extensive knowledge and experience in treating all types of oropharyngeal cancer, particularly complex cases. Your team of doctors partners with you to create the best treatment plan for your specific case.
- Specialized expertise in treating all oropharyngeal cancers, including squamous cell carcinoma and mucoepidermoid carcinoma.
- Advanced treatment options, including surgery, cancer medications, and radiation therapy, tailored to your specific needs.
- Team-based approach with cancer surgeons, medical oncologists, and ENTs who partner with you to provide specialized, targeted treatment.
- Clinical trials that provide access to innovative surgical and nonsurgical treatments that aren’t available at other cancer centers.
- Comprehensive support services to meet your mental, emotional, and spiritual needs.
- Ease of access to radiation therapy, drug therapy, and other treatment services across the Bay Area.
Connect to Care
Let us help find personalized care options for you and your family.
Interested in an Online Second Opinion?
The Stanford Medicine Online Second Opinion program offers you easy access to our world-class doctors. It’s all done remotely, and you don’t have to visit our hospital or one of our clinics for this service. You don’t even need to leave home!
Visit our online second opinion page to learn more.
Our specialists use the latest treatments to remove cancerous tumors and restore function to any affected areas of the head or neck. We create a specific plan for each person, based on the tumor’s location, size, and cause. Today, the cause of most oropharyngeal cancers is human papillomavirus (HPV).
Your personalized treatment plan may include:
Glossectomy
A glossectomy involves removing part or all of the tongue. Then surgeons reconstruct the tongue to preserve as much normal function as possible.
Mandibulectomy
A mandibulectomy removes cancers that develop in the lower jaw (mandible). Surgeons may use a piece of bone from another part of the body to reconstruct the jaw. With modern surgical techniques, retaining half or more of the jaw allows us to greatly preserve your appearance, speech, and swallowing function.
Pharyngectomy
This operation removes all or part of the throat or pharynx. For more extensive procedures, specialists perform reconstructive surgery to resurface the inside of the throat, improving your ability to speak and swallow.
Reconstruction
The goal of reconstructive surgery is to restore a body part’s structure and function after cancer treatment. These surgeries commonly use skin, muscle, and/or bone from another area of the body to repair damaged tissue.
Neck dissection
Neck dissection removes lymph nodes that are affected by oropharyngeal cancer or are at high risk of being affected. Once the surgeon removes the lymph nodes, a pathologist carefully examines them for cancer. We may perform neck dissection during your primary operation for oropharyngeal cancer or in a separate procedure.
Tracheostomy
This surgical procedure creates an opening in the trachea, or windpipe, to help with breathing. It is usually temporary.
You may receive drug therapy for oropharyngeal cancer by mouth, injection, or infusion. Our cancer doctors use a range of cancer medications, including:
Chemotherapy
This group of medications slows or stops the growth of cancer cells in the body. We may recommend chemotherapy for some types of oropharyngeal cancer. Your treatment plan may include chemotherapy:
- At the same time as radiation therapy (chemoradiation)
- As a single drug
- In combination with other treatments
Immunotherapy
These medications prompt your immune system to attack cancer cells. Immunotherapy treatments are the newest class of anti-cancer drugs. The main types of immunotherapy include:
- Antibodies: These proteins naturally occur in the immune system and are changed or selected for their anti-cancer effects. Specialists can design antibodies to attack certain features on cancer cells that weaken the cells and cause them to die. Your own immune system also can attach to and mark cancer cells for destruction.
- Immune checkpoint inhibitors: These drugs remove immune system controls and free the immune system to recognize and attack cancer cells.
- Cellular immunotherapy: Specialists modify or activate these immune cells to attack cancer cells.
Targeted therapy
This type of drug therapy mimics naturally occurring substances in the body to interfere with the growth or health of cancer cells. Examples of targeted therapies include molecules designed to interfere with natural hormones that activate cancer cells.
Chemoradiation
Chemoradiation can often shrink oropharyngeal tumors more than either chemotherapy or radiation treatments alone. This treatment option may be right for people with tumors that haven’t spread but are too advanced for surgery.
Radiation therapy uses high-energy X-rays or other types of radiation to destroy cancer cells. Our radiation oncologists have years of experience safely and effectively treating oropharyngeal cancer with radiation. We use a linear accelerator (LINAC) to deliver external radiation, and a typical regimen is once a day for six to seven weeks. External radiation therapies include:
- Intensity-modulated radiation therapy (IMRT): This is the most commonly used radiation for oropharyngeal cancer. Using 3D images from a CT scan, doctors detect the tumor’s location, select radiation doses, and identify surrounding healthy tissues. IMRT uses multiple beams with varying intensities to deliver high doses of radiation to cancer cells, while sparing nearby healthy structures.
- 3D conformal radiation therapy (3D-CRT): This type also uses 3D images from CT scans to identify the tumor’s shape and size and precisely target cancer cells while protecting healthy cells.
- Stereotactic body radiation therapy (SBRT) or stereotactic ablative radiation therapy (SABR): We typically use this radiation therapy for people with smaller tumors whose cancer has returned after primary treatment. It delivers high doses of radiation in several days.
To schedule an appointment with an oropharyngeal cancer specialist, please call: 650-498-6000