Background: Surgical resection with adjuvant concurrent radiochemotherapy is the standard of care for stage III-IV oral cavity cancer. In some cases, the dynamic course of the disease is out of the prepared schedule of treatment. In that event, a stereotactic radiosurgery boost might be the only chance for disease control.
Case presentation: Here, we present a case study of a patient with oral cancer who underwent surgery. During adjuvant radiotherapy, a metastatic cervical lymph node was diagnosed based on fine-needle aspiration biopsy. To increase the total dose to the metastatic tumor, a stereotactic radiosurgery boost of 1 × 18 Gy was performed two days after the last fraction of conventional radiotherapy. The early and late tolerance of this treatment were positive. During the 18-month follow-up, locoregional recurrence was not detected. The patient died due to secondary malignancy.
Conclusions: This paper shows that a stereotactic radiosurgery boost added to adjuvant conventional radiotherapy is an effective approach permitting the maintenance of good local control in well-selected patients.
Keywords: Head and neck cancer; Radiosurgery boost; Squamous cell carcinoma; Stereotactic radiotherapy.
© 2022. The Author(s).