Treatment of tongue cancer in the elderly

If you are unfortunately diagnosed with tongue cancer, you must have a good attitude to fight the disease, then change your lifestyle, improve your physical constitution, strengthen your body, and enhance your immunity to control the spread of cancer cells, so as to achieve the purpose of treating cancer. Today, let's take a look at the treatment methods for tongue cancer in the elderly:

1. Radiotherapy can be used as an adjuvant treatment before and after surgery for advanced tongue cancer.

2. Surgery is the main method for treating tongue cancer. For T1 cases, wedge-shaped resection more than 1 cm away from the lesion can be performed and sutured directly; for T2-T4 cases, hemiglossectomy or even total glossectomy should be performed. As an important organ for chewing and speech, reconstruction should be performed when more than 1/2 of the tongue is missing.

3. Chemotherapy: Cryotherapy can be considered for T1 and T2 tongue cancer.

4. Traditional Chinese medicine treatment. Traditional Chinese medicine can make up for the deficiencies of surgical treatment, radiotherapy, and chemotherapy. It can not only consolidate the effects of radiotherapy and chemotherapy, but also eliminate the toxic side effects of radiotherapy and chemotherapy.

Tongue cancer is the most common malignant tumor in oral cancer, and its treatment is mainly based on comprehensive treatment. The treatment options for tongue cancer include: chemotherapy, radiotherapy, surgery, interventional therapy, ablation therapy, photodynamic therapy, and radioactive particle implantation, etc.

The main purpose of the comprehensive treatment plan for tongue cancer is to prevent postoperative recurrence and distant metastasis of the tumor, which is the right direction to improve survival and cure rates. The specific plan is as follows: Radiotherapy, simple surgical resection or photodynamic therapy can be considered for early tongue cancer. A combination of various treatment methods should be used for advanced tongue cancer, but all of them are aimed at prolonging survival time and improving quality of life. Their respective disadvantages are: Surgery-speech function is affected after surgery. Radiotherapy-oral inflammation during radiotherapy is unbearable, and there are sequelae after radiotherapy such as sore throat and limited swallowing. Photodynamic therapy-function can be preserved, without the side effects of radiotherapy and chemotherapy, but there are side effects of photosensitivity.