Three cases of arterial embolization for bleeding in termial oral cancer patients

Abstract

Patients in the terminal stage of oral cancer often die of bleeding from primary or metastatic neck lesions. These patients frequently have a very low quality of life.
We report three cases of terminal oral cancer patients with bleeding, who received arterial embolization.
Two out of the three cases, except one who died on the fourth day after embolization, were assessed before and after arterial embolization using the Karnof sky Performance Status scale (KPS) and serum albumin (Alb) .
Consequently, each patient improved in KPS and Alb after embolization, and quality of life (QOL) of the two patients was better after arterial embolization.
We consider that arterial embolization was useful for improvement of QOL of such terminal cancer patients with bleeding from primary or metastatic neck lesions.