[Evaluation of clinical response of head and neck cancer patients during induction chemotherapy and chemoradiotherapy].

Chemoradiotherapy is recognized as the treatment of choice for patients with unresectable locally advanced head and neck cancer, and for those with resectable disease who decline surgery. To improve treatment efficacy, induction chemotherapy has been added to chemoradiotherapy in the past decade. Imaging tests are conducted during a series of treatments which require as long as four months, and are used to modify treatment strategy. Imaging tests are particularly useful for helping to avoid overtreatment. Given the better specificity 18F-FDG-PET imaging has over traditional imaging tests, the addition of 18FFDG-PET imaging to CT or MRI several months after the completion of chemoradiotherapy is useful for detecting residual disease with viable tumor cells.