Healthbeauty123.com – The floor of the mouth is a unique region of the oral cavity that is located beneath the tongue. As such, it is a very important region to study for dentists. The floor of the mouth is home to four of the six major salivary glands. These glands are called sublingual glands and submandibular glands. It is also home to two major arterial arteries, the sublingual and submental arteries.
Symptoms of Oral Cancer
Cancers that develop on the floor of the mouth usually begin in squamous cells that line the inside of the mouth. These cancers are aggressive and often recur in this area. Treatments for floor of mouth cancer include surgery, radiation therapy, and chemotherapy. If left untreated, floor mouth cancer can spread throughout the body and affect other parts of the body.
Currently, the floor of mouth is a difficult area for surgeons to access. However, the growing number of HPV-associated oropharyngeal cancers has sparked a new interest in minimally invasive transoral surgery. Although adequate surgical exposure is difficult at the base of the tongue, many surgeons have developed complex oral retractors to solve this problem. Floor of mouth window surgery eliminates the use of oral retractors and provides a more precise surgical field that can be used for robotic or laser instruments.
Treatment for Floor of Mouth Cancer
Treatment for floor of mouth cancer involves surgery, usually performed by a head and neck cancer surgeon. The treatment will depend on the extent of the cancer, the size of the tumor, and whether the cancer has spread to nearby lymph nodes. In some cases, radiation therapy is used to shrink the tumor before surgery. This therapy may also be used to kill cancer cells after surgery.
Floor Mouth Cancers may spread to the lymph nodes, thereby making it a stage 4 tumor. Fortunately, the majority of these tumors are benign and do not spread to the rest of the body. Because of the rarity of stage four cancer, treatment options for floor mouth cancer depend on the stage. If the lesion is detected in an early stage, radiation or surgery are the most common options. If the cancer has spread to lymph nodes, a combination of surgery and radiation is often necessary.
The Best Way to Treat Oral Cancer
Surgical intervention for floor mouth involves removing the ranula and the sublingual gland transorally. The procedure can be challenging due to the difficult anatomy. Because of this, it is recommended to be performed by an experienced surgeon with the assistance of an experienced assistant. However, robotic surgery can be adapted to reduce this difficulty by using the da Vinci Si Robotic Surgical System. The use of this robotic surgery is an alternative to traditional transoral resection.
The MeSH controlled vocabulary thesaurus is a good place to search for articles relating to Floor Mouth. The MeSH descriptors are organized in a hierarchical structure, which makes them easy to search at different levels of specificity. By looking at a graph, you can see how many articles were published about the topic by year. For example, if it was a popular topic during a particular year, it would be considered a “major” topic for researchers.
Another surgical option for floor mouth defects is the myomucosal island flap. This technique is also used to repair anterior defects. The procedure creates a flap from the dorsal median area of the tongue and then transfers it to the floor of the mouth as a transit flap. This method is not as common as other options but can be effective for treating this deformity.
Reference:
Kademani, Deepak. “Oral cancer.” Mayo Clinic Proceedings. Vol. 82. No. 7. Elsevier, 2007.
