[Recent treatment modality for advanced head and neck carcinomas]

Histopathologically, about 90% of head and neck cancer is squamous cell carcinoma. The curative treatments for head and neck cancer are conventional radiotherapy and/or surgical resection. Multidisciplinary treatment, including combinations of the curative therapy, chemotherapy and immunotherapy, has been applied for advanced head and neck carcinomas with poor outcomes. Nowadays, chemotherapy is under investigation in the neo-adjuvant, adjuvant and concurrent chemoradiotherapy. In this paper, the treatment approach was reviewed in terms of prognostic factors which have been retrospectively estimated, along with recent developments in treatment modalities of advanced cases.