Abstract
Elderly patients have comorbidity, such as hypertension, diabetes mellitus, liver, kidney or lung dysfunction. The selection of treatment, including surgery, radiotherapy with or without chemotherapy, for elderly patient with oral cancer is made by a multidisciplinary team, which considers key factors such as the primary tumor site, disease extent, and individual patient factors including age, comorbidity and preferences regarding treatment type. Surgical treatment improves survival in oral cancer patients, but extended surgery for locally advanced oral cancer patients causes severe oral dysfunction including swallowing and speech difficulties, which affects the patient’s quality of life. Curative nonsurgical treatments including definitive radiotherapy or concurrent chemoradiotherpy are sometimes selected for elderly patients with locally advanced oral cancer due to comorbidities or age. Elderly patients with oral cancer have a tendency to have acute adverse events during treatment compared with younger patients.
This review was conducted to evaluate the clinical outcomes of radiotherapy and daily concurrent retrograde superselective intra-arterial chemotherapy for elderly patients with oral cancer.
