What Are the Types of Head and Neck Cancer?
What Are the Types of Head and Neck Cancer? from Patient Empowerment Network on Vimeo.
What is head and neck cancer? What cancers are included in this classification? Dr. Jessica Geiger provides a definition and reviews the main types of head and neck cancer.
Dr. Jessica Geiger is a medical oncologist at the Cleveland Clinic. Learn more about Dr. Geiger.
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Transcript:
Katherine Banwell:
What is head and neck cancer?
Dr. Jessica Geiger:
Head and neck cancer is sort of a broad term to include all cancers, all malignancies within the upper aero-digestive system. When we think about head and neck cancer, the vast majority of those cancers are going to be squamous cell carcinomas that start anywhere from the tip of the tongue to the back of the throat to the voice box area. But head and neck cancer can also include cancer of the salivary glands, skull base, or sinus cancers as well.
Katherine Banwell:
What are the types of head and neck cancer? And where can they start in the body?
Dr. Jessica Geiger:
There are several different types. The majority of them are called squamous cell carcinomas. Squamous cell cancers or squamous cell carcinoma encompasses over 90 percent of head and neck cancers.
And those can start anywhere on the tip of the tongue, anywhere in the oral cavity, the tonsils, the back of the throat called the oropharynx, or also in the larynx or around the voice box in those areas. But head and neck cancer can also include salivary gland cancers of which there are dozens of different recognized histologies. These are cancers of the larger, major salivary glands like the parotid glands or the submandibular glands. But they can also include cancers of minor salivary glands that aren’t even named but are found all over the upper aero-digestive mucosa and are there. Head and neck cancers can also include what we refer to as skull-based tumors or midline sinus, peri-sinus cancers as well.
