How would you approach a patient with synchronous HPV-mediated bilateral tonsil primary with ipsilateral lymph nodes who cannot receive chemotherapy?
Answer from: Radiation Oncologist at Community Practice
We address this type of scenario in the guideline published last year in PRO Margalit et al., PMID 39078350. I hope the explanations there are useful, but to summarize, in the MARCH meta-analyses, most altered fractionation types improve locoregional control, but only hyperfractionation (often 1.2 G...
Answer from: Radiation Oncologist at Academic Institution
Other than the 2 primaries instead of one, the approach shouldn't be different.
With regard to radiation, without details of the staging, it is hard to make a specific recommendation. Usually, though, bilateral tonsil disease has at least one side with T1 and is often an incidental surgical or radi...
Answer from: Radiation Oncologist at Community Practice
DAHANCA style - 6 Fx per week, one day a week BID. This study was for glottic larynx, but can extrapolate. Also, the Danes studied a complete BID approach for unresectable head and neck cancer that had great results, delivering 76 Gy in 56 Fx.
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Radiation Oncologist at West Virginia University RTOG 9003 demonstrated that altered fractionation ...
Answer from: Radiation Oncologist at Community Practice
Dahanca accelerated RT, 6# per week, is very effective at mitigating omission of chemotherapy for T1-2N1 HPV-related OPC (Barcelona et al., PMID 40262333).The stage of primary disease and resectability isn’t given, but an alternative approach to explore in this patient would be upfront surgery...
Answer from: Radiation Oncologist at Academic Institution
Depends on age, performance status, logistics, and disease burden/symptoms. If able to do hyperfractionation (6960-8160 in 120 BID, depending on disease burden), would prefer. If not, consider a hypofractionated course of 5,400 in 18 fractions. As noted in other answers, DAHANCA with 6 fractions a w...