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• 　　What Is Tongue Cancer?

  　　Tongue cancer is the most common oral cancer, which mostly occurs in the margin of tongue, and other regions such as tip, dorsum and root of tongue. Tongue cancer is often manifested as ulcerated or infiltrative type.

  　　How Common Tongue Cancer Is?

  　　According to statistics, the incidence rate of tongue cancer accounts for 0.8 % to 1.5% of systemic malignant tumors, 5% ~7.8 % of malignant tumors in head and neck, and 32.3% ~ 50.6 % of oral cancer. The incidence rate of tongue cancer is higher in men than women, and average age of incidence is about 60 years old.

  　　Causes of Tongue Cancer

  　　The causes of tongue cancer have not been fully determined, but at present a consistent view is that chronic injury, ultraviolet radiation, X-ray and other radioactive substances can be pathogenic factors of tongue cancer, in addition, mental factors, endocrine factors, immune state and genetic factors are also found to be related to the occurrence of tongue cancer.

  　　Nursing And Care Methods After Surgery

  　　1. At the day after surgery, patients should lie low ( do not use pillow ), and at the next day patients can lie on bed with semireclining position, so as to reduce head, facial and wound congestion and edema.

  　　2. Closely observing vital signs of patients, keeping respiratory tract clear.

  　　3. Observing whether drainage tube is smooth, recording color, quality, and quantity of drainage, if any abnormality occurs, it should be immediately reported to doctors.

  　　4. After surgery, patients should take nutrition meal by nasal feeding. After7- 10 days, patients can try to eat liquid food.

  　　5. Guiding patients to do a good oral care, keeping oral cavity clean.

  　　What kinds of supports can be obtained?

  　　Practice proves that the clinic team services composed by multiple disciplines like oncosurgery, oncology, pathology, imageology and anesthesia doctors as well as professional nurses, can provide patients with most effective, most suitable and most economic treatment plan, and also can greatly improve the therapeutic effect of treating cancer patients.

  　　“One station” medical system constructed by Modern Cancer Hospital Guangzhou combining multiple disciplines, can perform comprehensive diagnosis and treatment for patients under the condition of without adding patients’ burden. Therefore, on one hand, it can provide all-round and heartfelt medical services, and on the other hand, it improves medical efficiency and level. There are many channels can be applied to conduct the communication between patients and doctors, like online consultation, email, telephone conversation, and face-to-face consultation. All these consultation services can effectively help patients to fight the cancer. While the medical team faced by the patients includes doctors, nurses, dietitians, interpreters and so on to meet various demands in different level of different countries. Patients would be more confident under the unobstructed communication environment to cooperate the hospital to diagnose and treat the diseases.

• 　　Experts of Modern Cancer Hospital Guangzhou said that tongue cancer treatment methods are various, including: surgery, radiotherapy, chemotherapy, cellular immunotherapy, minimally invasive targeted therapy with combination of traditional Chinese medicine and Western medicine. Hereby we would like to introduce the following treatment methods:

  

  　　Surgery of tongue cancer

  　　If the tumor located within 2/3 area of anterior tongue, operation should be firstly considered. Tongue cancer has many characters like relatively wider expansion within tongue muscles, early neck lymph node metastasis, high metastatic rate, etc. Therefore, in addition to the T1 cases, the others must consider radical operation for primary foci together with elective neck lymph nodes combined, which includes: primary tumor excision, neck dissection. For the weak and elderly patients of T1/2 tongue cancer or also having other systemic diseases that cannot undergo operation, consideration should be given to other treatment methods.

  　　Radiotherapy of tongue cancer

  　　For T1~T2 early tongue cancer, radiotherapy can achieve good effects. The advantages of radiotherapy are that tongue can keep good shape and function after the therapy.

  　　Chemotherapy of tongue cancer

  　　For early high differentiated tongue cancer, radiotherapy can play a preferred role in the treatment; for advanced tongue cancer, integrated sequential therapy combined with chemotherapy, radiotherapy and surgery shall be adopted. Meanwhile, immune therapy combining with minimally invasive targeted therapy of TCM and western medicines shall be also reinforced.

  　　Cellular immunotherapy of tongue cancer

  　　Cellular immunotherapy belongs to tumor biological treatment, and refers to imputing immune cells with antitumor specialty into patient to directly kill tumor or stimulate the body’s antitumor immune reaction. Therefore, it has the following advantages:

  　　1. Enhance the immune function of patients, at the same time, play the function of antitumor and anti-virus for most of malignant tumors.

  　　2. Reinforce the efficacies during or after treatments of operation excision, interventional therapy, radio-frequency ablation, argon helium knife.

  　　3. For tumor patients who temporarily cannot perform surgery, interventional therapy or other treatments, NK cell therapy can be applied to enhance the body's immune function.

  　　Experts of Modern Cancer Hospital Guangzhou remind that tongue cancer is a great threat to health of human-being. Once diagnosed with tongue cancer, patients shall receive timely treatments, however, the treatment methods vary, and how to choose proper treatments shall depend on patients’ actual condition.

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