[Preoperative chemotherapy for patients with advanced head and neck cancer]

Cases with head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) have clinically advanced tumors. The curative treatments for advanced HNSCC are radiotherapy and/or surgical resection. However, standard treatment alone is less successful for advanced HNSCC. Accordingly, two modalities using chemotherapy are applied as preoperative treatment for HNSCC. First, multi-drug chemotherapy has been administered as neoadjuvant chemotherapy (NAC). As a result during the past 20 years, NAC without a high complete response (CR) rate has never improved the long-term outcome of advanced cases. Therefore, the development of intensive chemotherapy regimen with a high CR rate including taxanes is ongoing. On the other hand, organ preservation modality has been under investigation using combined radiotherapy with NAC regimen with a dose reduction of administered chemotherapeutic drugs or a new chemotherapy regimen including taxanes (concomitant or concurrent chemoradiotherapy). In this strategy, impact chemotherapy with almost the same anti-tumor effect as NAC and with a potential of radiation sensitizer is necessary.