Instead, theses malignant cells proliferate and grow into adjacent tissue. It is difficult for the body s immune system to identify the cancer cells as something unwanted since these cells originated as normal cells. The mainstays of treatment for cancer are surgery, radiation therapy, and chemotherapy. The aim of surgery is, of course, to physically remove the cancer and any local metastasis of the cancer in the neck. Radiation therapy applies an external beam of radiation to the cancer to preferentially kill the cancer and spare the normal tissues.
Chemotherapy refers to medication given, usually intravenously, to destroy cancer cells.
There are, of course, other treatments, some experimental that are used for different forms of cancer. There are a number of different types of cancer that occurs in the body. In the throat, the vast majority of cancers are squamous cell cancer. Other less common types of cancers are cancer of the salivary glands and lymphomas. The long-term prognosis of the cancer is associated with the size of the tumor, the extent of the tumor, the location of the cancer, whether or not the cancer has spread to the lymph nodes of the neck, and whether the cancer has spread to other areas of the body.