It may seem obvious that continuing to smoke while been treated for head and neck cancer is a bad thing. However, smoking is a major risk factor for head and neck cancer and it may be that many patients who develop the disease are truly addicted to smoking and may find it hard to quit. They may also find smoking a comfort and believe that it is too late to quit now they already have head and neck cancer. Allen Chen, a radiation oncology expert at UC Davis Cancer Center, has now come up with some interesting new research that might persuade patients with head and neck cancer reconsider their position on smoking. Chen and his team reviewed the medical records of 101 patients with head and neck cancer who did not quit smoking prior to starting radiation therapy. This group compared them with a similar group of patients who did quit. They found that 55% of those who quit were still alive five years later, compared to just 23% of those who did not quit. Similarly, 53 of the smokers had recurrences of head and neck cancer compared to just 40 in the control group. Smokers also experienced more complications during radiotherapy, like scarring, hoarseness and difficulty with feeding.

The research is needed to find out why smokers have a worse outcome in head and neck cancer if they do not quit. It may be that the oxygen deprivation caused by smoking lowers the success of radiotherapy, or smokers may have other unhealthy habits that lower their chances of a successful outcome. This study does not establish a cause and effect relationship – that is, smoking in itself is not proved to actually cause the poorer outcomes in head and neck cancer. Nevertheless, the findings should convince patients with head and neck cancer of the potential benefits to them of quitting smoking prior to beginning radiotherapy.

I always tell patients “ you should stop smoking” but I had no tangible evidence to use to convince them they would be worse off if they continued to smoke,’ Chen said. ‘U wanted concrete data to see if smoking was detrimental in terms of curability, overall survival and tolerability of treatment. We showed continued tobacco smoking contributed to negative outcomes with regards to all of these.

Source:

Chen A et al Tobacco Smoking During Radiation Therapy for Head-and-Neck Cancer Is Associated With Unfavorable Outcome International Journal of Radiation and Oncology, Biology and Physics online April 14 2010