Articles

Major head and neck surgery — whether a jaw reconstruction, a neck dissection, a robotic resection of an oropharyngeal tumor, or a procedure requiring a free flap — is not a small undertaking. The operations themselves can range from three to twelve or more hours in the operating room, often followed by several days in an intensive care unit and a hospital stay measured in weeks, not days. What happens before you ever arrive at the hospital matters more than most patients rea

The pathology report arrives a few days after surgery. It is a dense, jargon-heavy document, usually two or three pages, and it contains information that will shape every treatment decision that follows. Most patients have never seen one before. The language — margins, lymphovascular invasion, extranodal extension, perineural invasion — is clinical shorthand that carries real weight, and trying to parse it alone, at home, the night before your follow-up appointment, is not a

Most people don't think much about a sore in their mouth until it has been there for a few weeks. That delay is understandable — the vast majority of mouth sores are harmless, caused by trauma, stress, or a minor viral infection, and they heal on their own in a week or two. But some do not, and the ones that don't deserve prompt attention. Oral cancer has significant impacts on vital human functions, and the single most important predictor of outcome is how early it is caught

Surgery for head and neck cancer that involves free flap reconstruction is among the most complex procedures in our field. The operation itself — removing a tumor, rebuilding the defect with tissue transferred from another part of the body, and connecting that tissue to a new blood supply using microsurgery — is a significant undertaking. Patients and families who have been told this is the plan often have a clear question: what actually happens afterward? What does the hospi