Thursday, June 22, 2017

Honey to Address Mucositis

Dental Abstracts
Volume 62, Issue 4, July–August 2017, Pages 237–238

The treatment for advanced stage head and neck cancer typically involves radiotherapy, chemotherapy, or their combined use (radio/chemotherapy) in addition to surgical resection.

Radio/chemotherapy is unable to distinguish between normal human cells and malignant proliferating cancer cells and kills both types of cells equally. Oral mucosal cells have a high rate of proliferation and self-renewal and can become a target for radio/chemotherapy. The resulting mucositis is manifest as pain, erythema, and ulcers, leading to patient noncompliance with treatment.

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