Nutrition Is Vital for Patients with Head and Neck Cancer

“We’ve now gone away from placing feeding tubes in our patients with HPV-related oropharyngeal cancers. We’ve been fairly successful, with less than 8% of our patients needing some form of feeding tube,” Dr. Feng said. He credits this success to the close working relationship between the surgical team and the speech language pathology team (SLP). “We have a protocol where all patients are seen one to two weeks before surgery by the SLP,” he said. The SLP conducts video swallowing studies to assess the patient’s baseline function before TORS. After surgery, the patients are followed closely by the SLP and registered nutritionists. The patients continue to be seen regularly throughout the postoperative period and beyond.

“By having this close interaction with the SLP and the multidisciplinary team, we’ve been able to avoid any type of feeding tube in the majority of our patients,” Dr. Feng said.