Head and Neck Cancer Treatment and Research Updates

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Transcript:

Katherine:

Well, thank you so much for taking time out of your schedule to join us today. As you know, head and neck cancer research has been progressing quickly. What recent developments do you think patients should know about? 

Dr. Cohen:

Well, there are a lot, really. And I think probably the first and foremost is the impact that immunotherapy is having on treatment for head and neck cancer. And that is mostly in the form of a drug called pembrolizumab (Keytruda). It’s an anti-PD1 antibody that really – what it does is stimulate a specific cell type in the immune system called T cells. And now, it’s approved for the treatment of patients with recurrent or metastatic disease.

However, for patients, I think probably the most important development over the last little while is the realization of the important of the multidisciplinary team in the management of patients with head and neck cancer.  

It used to be that the care was driven by a single oncologist or a single individual, but over the last, I would say mostly over the last decade, maybe a little but more than that. There’s becoming this realization more and more and the implementation, of course, of these multidisciplinary approaches involving a surgeon, a radiation oncologist, a medical oncologist, but much more than that. A speech and language pathologist, a swallowing expert, nutritionist, psychologist, pharmacists, dentists, of course oral surgeons.  

With the, now, the prospective data to validate that in a multidisciplinary setting, with a multidisciplinary tumor board where each patient is discussed with all of these individuals providing input. The outcomes are substantially better. And so, for patients, I think that that’s had the greatest impact, because we’re talking about patients who can be cured for the most part.  

And those cure rates increasing just simply by getting the right people involved in their care. 

Katherine:

Yeah. Very important, then. As I mentioned a few minutes ago, patients should be aware of all of their options. How can patients stay informed as the treatment landscape expands and changes?  

Dr. Cohen:

Yeah. It’s challenging because not only are patients and their caregivers grappling with this diagnosis, and it’s a brand-new world for almost all of them. Many patients have never had to deal with cancer ever before. Pile onto that the functional and social aspects of having head and neck cancer. Remember this is a cancer that affects so much of what makes us human – our ability to communicate, to speak, to eat, to swallow. And so, now, patients are flung into this situation, and it is challenging to find good information.  

Having said that, often the oncologists that are involved in the person’s care should be a great source of information, especially if those oncologists have experience treating head and neck cancer. And incidentally, just as an aside, there is also data and mounting data that the more experienced a center is in treating head and neck cancer, the better the outcomes. And so, that’s something that patients may want to think about as they choose their providers.

But then there are also public sources. There are support groups for head and neck cancer. The Head and Neck Cancer Alliance is one of those. SPOHNC is another and they’re excellent sources of information for patients. American Cancer Society is always a very good source of information, mostly for cancer basics but they do have the pages that are dedicated to head and neck cancer.  

And then the American Society of Clinical Oncology, or ASCO, actually does have a patient-facing part of their organization, and that can help not only with information about the disease, but it can also help find providers that have a specific interest in this type of cancer.