Taichung Armed Forces General Hospital

One patient who smoked and drunk was recently identified as a pharynx cancer due to abnormal sensation and sore of throat.
The ENT doctor– Lai, Wen-Sen reminded that people who have the habits of smoking, drinking or chewing betel nuts and have symptoms like hoarse voice, lumps in the neck and difficulty swallowing, should seek medical attention. He also notes that the early symptoms of hypopharyngeal cancer are not obvious. Mostly patients have the symptoms of abnormal sensation of throat, sore throats and coughs are mostly diagnosed as colds or chronic pharyngitis. The patient were diagnosed the end stage of cancer until the appearance of the symptoms, like tumors growing, hoarse sound, difficulty swallowing, and neck lumps symptoms.

The radiation oncologist—Liu, Ming-Yueh indicated that radiation therapy is one of the most important treatments of stage I and II hypopharyngeal cancer. Because the anatomical position of pharynx cancer is related to the breath, pronunciation, and swallowing function, it often leaves clinicians and patients in a dilemma in functional retention and disease control.

The benefits of radiation therapy include the ability to achieve organ retention without affecting the quality of life of the patient, the range of exposure in addition to the lower pharynx, the two-sided neck lymph nodes are also included in the treatment of the field.
The treatment period is from every Monday to Friday, daily 180 to 212cGy, the total amount of exposure is about 6000 to 7000cGy.

In 2020, Taichung Armed Forces General Hospital introduced a new true light knife radiation therapy system (TrueBeam™), which uses high-energy photon irradiation and features a fast, accurate and multi-monitoring system, and combines image guidance devices (Image Guided Radiotherapy IGRT) to correct the location of tumors in a six-dimensional direction, ensuring the accuracy of daily treatment and effectively reducing side effects. These side effects include such as reducing the skin of the head and neck at the site of exposure and inflammation of the mucous membranes of the mouth to increase the control rate of treatment and achieve personalized and accurate treatment of cancer.