Expertise in Treating Head and Neck Cancers
Cancers of the head and neck can have a huge impact on someone’s life – from affecting speech, swallowing, and breathing, to one’s self esteem when the face is changed because of the disease and its treatment.

At Boston Medical Center, we are specialists in caring for patients with head and neck cancers. A regional center for this treatment, our Center of Excellence includes not only medical, radiation, and surgical doctors, but also nurse navigators, social workers, speech specialists, and patient support services. In this way, we provide comprehensive care for every patient’s journey through diagnosis, treatment, and recovery.

Surgery is an important aspect of treating head and neck cancers. While complex operations can last many hours, our team collaborates so that cancer removal and reconstructive surgery are performed together, as one operation. Surgery is an important aspect of treating head and neck cancers. We offer the full array of surgical options from complex open operations with micro-vascular reconstruction to minimally invasive surgery including transoral robotic surgery or TORS. “The goal with all of these operations is the same, to minimize scarring and disfigurement while maintaining swallowing and speech function for the patient,” explains Dr. Gregory Grillone, Strong-Vaughan Professor and Chair of the Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery.

Our program is also unique in our doctors’ abilities to care for cancers located in the mouth. Often tricky, these cancers may involve the tongue, floor of mouth, palate, cheek, sinuses, nasopharynx and jawbone and can extend into the neck, throat and voice box. At BMC, our multidisciplinary team consists of head and neck surgeons, skull base surgeons, facial plastic reconstruction surgeons, oral surgeons, radiation oncologists, and medical oncologists. Together, they can surgically remove, and then reconstruct the oral cavity.

In all of their work, our doctors use state-of-the-art treatments including transoral robotic surgery, endoscopic and minimally invasive surgery, Cyberknife technology for radiation treatment, minimally invasive airway and laryngeal surgery, and comprehensive microvascular and facial plastic reconstruction.

If you, or someone you love, has been diagnosed with head or neck cancer, visit BMC.org/HeadNeckCancer.

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