Treatments

At Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center, each cancer has a wide range of treatments that can be used alone or in combination to give the best outcome for your specific cancer, including standard therapies and novel therapies only available in clinical trials. That’s why careful diagnosis is so important.

  • Surgery

    Surgery is usually only used to remove lymph nodes. 

  • Radiation Therapy

    The usual treatment for early-stage nasopharyngeal cancers is radiation therapy. We aim the radiation beams accurately at the nasopharyngeal tumor. Lymph nodes in the neck typically get treated, too, to prevent cancer growing there. Some patients may have cancer cells in these lymph nodes that can’t be detected. 

    • IMRT (Intensity modulated radiation therapy): You benefit from Sylvester's experience as a world leader in treating head and neck cancers with IMRT, an advanced form of external-beam radiation therapy. This therapy allows radiation specialists to shape radiation doses to the exact three-dimensional size of your tumor. The precise control and flexibility can decrease radiation exposure to your healthy tissue.

    • Radiosensitizing Treatment: In some cases, chemotherapy and radiation therapy are used together to kill all the cancer cells. This approach decreases the need for any surgery. It also helps to keep your voice box and throat structures intact.

    Chemotherapy

    The high level of experience of Sylvester’s medical oncology team allows our physicians to choose and deliver the most advanced chemotherapy approaches, often before they become available in the community. Your doctor may prescribe chemotherapy before or after surgery or will combine chemotherapy with radiation therapy to try and avoid surgery altogether. Head and neck chemotherapy drugs do not usually cause you to lose any hair.

    Intravenous (infusion) chemotherapy is offered at our Comprehensive Treatment Unit (CTU) at Sylvester's Miami location, a 12,000-square-foot unit that includes 33 recliners and 11 private rooms. If you prefer, you may have your infusion treatments at the Deerfield Beach, Plantation, Hollywood, Coral Springs, Coral Gables and Kendall locations.

     

     

  • Targeted Therapy 

    This treatment uses medicines that target specific parts of cancer cells. For example, a protein called EGFR may accelerate the growth of head and neck cancer cells. The most commonly used medicine that targets these cells is called cetuximab. It blocks EGFR, so the cancer cell growth often slows or stops.