Dysphagia-Optimised Intensity Modulated Radiation Therapy vs Standard Intensity Modulated Radiation Therapy in post-operative cases of oral cavity carcinoma

Surgery is the mainstay of treatment for resectable oral cavity cancer. However, patients with poor prognostic factors are also offered adjuvant RT with or without CT. With combined modality treatment, patients have to suffer from dysphagia especially because of irradiation of dysphagia aspiration related structures(DARS) during RT. With modern RT techniques like IMRT, doses to DARS and thus subsequently swallowing dysfunction could be minimized. Patients of both gender of the age group 18-70 years will be included. Patients with prior Chemotherapy and/or Radiotherapy or synchronous malignancy will be excluded. The present study is a randomized controlled study and the study aims to compare two different IMRT techniques i.e., dysphagia optimised IMRT (DO-IMRT) v/s standard IMRT (S-IMRT) in patients of oral cavity cancer who will be receiving adjuvant RT with or without Concurrent CTH. The primary end point is acute toxicity and the secondary end points are loco-regional control, disease-free survival, quality of life, late toxicty and overall survival.