Penn Center for Head and Neck Cancer
Over 100 Years of Service
Cancer care in the Department of Otorhinolaryngology-Head and Neck
Surgery has a strong tradition going back to the formalization
of our Department in 1870. The Penn Center for Head and Neck Cancer
was established as one of the country's first multidisciplinary
head and neck cancer centers in 1991.
Our head and neck surgery
unit is nationally recognized by the USNews & World
Report as among
the top 10 in the country. The Penn Center for Head and Neck Cancer
is part of the Abramson
Cancer Center of the University of Pennsylvania
which has held the continuous designation as a Comprehensive Cancer
Center by the National Cancer Institute since 1973, one of 39 such
Centers in the United States. Our mission focuses on innovation
and the delivery of compassionate Head and Neck Cancer patient
care.
Early on the founding members of our center realized that the popular
trend of many centers was to attempt to treat almost all head and neck
cancer with chemotherapy and radiation, essentially abandoning the use
of surgery for most head and neck cancers. While this seemed reasonable to many
surgeons, given the very radical surgical approaches that were popular twenty
five years ago, experience and the literature have shown that a significant
percentage of the patient who undergo chemo radiation as the only treatment
ended up with long term swallowing problems and other side effects.
The philosophy
of management at the University of Pennsylvania is based on a comprehensive
approach. Rather than abandoning "surgery" our goals
have been to both utilize and create state of the art surgical techniques,
many of which were not available twenty five years ago, and judiciously
help patients to choose between these modern surgical and non-surgical
approaches.
An Integrated Multidisciplinary Approach
The philosophy of management at the University of Pennsylvania is based
on a comprehensive approach. Among our surgical
innovations include the first in the world research and clinical
program in transoral
robotic surgery (TORS) utilizing the da Vinci® surgical system.
To date we have done well over 250 TORS cases,
with excellent reports of both oncologic and functional outcomes. Learn
more about our integrated multidisciplinary approach >>
Experience Counts
Our team manages more head and neck cancer than any other hospital
in the Delaware Valley. Learn more about our experience >>
View graphs to learn more >>
Decades of Experience
Since our clinicians have a combined experience of
many decades treating patients with primary chemoradiation as well
as primary surgical approaches we bring to the table a unique ability
to figure out which patients, with which cancers, would most benefit
from surgical versus non-surgical approaches. Learn more about our
decades of experience >>
State-of-the-Art
Our state-of-the-art radiation team has
a tremendous experience with IMRT radiation and will soon have the
newest and largest
proton beam center in the world. Learn more about our state-of-the-art
care >>
Providing Care Around the Country and World
Many patients come from around the country and world to undergo treatments
such as transoral
robotic surgery (TORS) with the da Vinci® surgical system which were
developed here at Penn. We have an outstanding group of patient support
specialists, nurses, and nurse practioners and other assistants that
help make travelling a long distance to undergo cancer care, which
may not be available in your community, a reasonable alternative.
For easy printing, please click here to view the head and neck cancer
site as a PDF >>
