Articles

For many patients, surgery is not the end of treatment — it’s the beginning of a longer road. When I perform a major head and neck cancer resection, one of the questions I hear most often in the days that follow is: Will I need radiation? It depends, and the recommendation comes from a careful review of your pathology, your anatomy, and your overall health. If radiation is recommended, knowing what to expect — why it’s done, what it feels like, and how to get through it — ma

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

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