The Facts About Throat Cancer Video

Air date: Aug. 26, 2010

For more info: Sharp Grossmont Hospital and Helical TomoTherapy

Transcript

Jeff Powers: And welcome back, we’ve moved to the back lot. Throat cancer. It’s a growing problem in this country, and the latest high-profile example you may have heard about — Oscar-winning actor Michael Douglas, just diagnosed. But, state-of-the-art treatment options are becoming available and here to talk about some of those, Dr. Barry Uhl from Sharp Grossmont Hospital joins us. Doctor, thank you for joining us.

Dr. Barry Uhl, Radiation Oncologist, Sharp Grossmont Hospital: You’re welcome.

Jeff Powers: TomoTherapy is an advanced treatment option that’s becoming more readily available for patients?

Dr. Uhl: Well, currently, Sharp Grossmont has the only TomoTherapy unit in the county, but it’s a specialized radiation linear accelerator that uses CT-image guidance so that we can actually see where we’re treating inside and outside before each treatment.

Jeff Powers: What does this mean for patients in terms of advancement for their treatment?

Dr. Uhl: Well, it’s just advancing at targeting so that you end up with less side effects and less normal tissues radiated while you can still escalate the dose to tumors for better control.

Jeff Powers: Symptoms of throat cancer? I know Michael Douglas is a high-profile case, which should bring some awareness to this issue — symptoms and how prevalent is throat cancer?

Dr. Uhl: Well, the symptoms normally present themselves as hoarseness or a change in your voice, you can also have a lump on your neck that is unexplained, some difficulty swallowing, and those are the mainly the ways that people present. Head and neck cancers in general are about 3 to 5 percent of all cancers. Laryngeal cancer and throat cancer make up most of that. There are about 12,000 cases of laryngeal cancer or “voice box” cancer and another 12 to 13,000 in the throat area.

Jeff Powers: So, again about Tomo technology, if somebody is diagnosed with throat cancer and they’re looking for the most advanced therapy, they’ll go to Sharp Grossmont and they’ll find what? How long is the process? What is the rate that they’ll recover?

Dr. Uhl: Typically, an ENT physician will diagnose the throat cancer, then they’ll be doing some laboratory studies and imaging studies to get a better idea of the extent of the disease. And then, they will come to see me and a team of a medical oncologist, a radiation oncologist and the surgeon, and we’ll get together and come up with a treatment plan.

Jeff Powers: OK, and tips for folks on maybe preventing the disease and what we’re going to learn in the coming months to come about it.

Dr. Uhl: Typically, smoking and drinking are the prime culprits for causing throat cancer. Smoking and drinking together is actually is worse and perpetuates, gives you a higher chance of getting the cancer, but by quitting smoking and quitting drinking drastically lower your risks of getting that.

Jeff Powers: TomoTherapy, is it expensive? Is it covered by insurance? What is it, for folks that are seriously considering it?

Dr. Uhl: Radiation therapy is somewhat expensive in general, but most medical treatments for cancer are expensive as well. But no, it’s covered. It’s not experimental at all.

Jeff Powers: Not experimental at all? OK. Anything else you can tell us about the program if folks need or wanted to get in touch with you? What’s the best way to do that?

Dr. Uhl: Well, Sharp.com, you can go link to the Sharp Grossmont Cancer Center. If they want more information on laryngeal cancer or head and neck and throat cancer, www.cancer.gov is a really good resource.

Jeff Powers: OK, Dr. Barry Uhl, thank you for joining us. This is such very important issue with cancer as being such an important topic, so thank you for coming out.

Dr. Uhl: You’re welcome.