Abstract
Chewing and swallowing dysfunctions after surgical treatment adversely impact the quality of life of patients with oral and oropharyngeal cancers. To address this issue, for the past six years, we have been working to develop an effective rehabilitation program in which speech therapists play a central role. To better understand the surgical procedures in detail and background information of the patients, speech therapists attend the preoperative meeting and sit with head and neck surgeons at the time of informed consent. The speech therapists then start their clinical care as preoperative orientation. In this article, we report our experience of the team approach and describe our rehabilitation program for chewing and swallowing in concrete.
