Mastication and Muscular Thickness of Patients with Head and Neck Cancer

Methods: The experimental group consisted of 11 patients with head and neck cancer treatment finalized. This cancer treatment was based on radiotherapy focused on local of different types of head and neck cancer lesions. The control group consisted of 11 subjects paired with experimental group. The electromyographic activity (sEMG), evaluated by the data of Root Medium Square of masseter e temporalis muscles, was carried out by Myosystem Br-1 electromyographer at rest, maximal parafilm clenching, opening and closing the mouth, deglutition, chewing of bilateral parafilm, chewing of right side, of left side and of habitual side of a mastication tester. Muscle thickness was measured with a SonoSite Titan ultrasound tool using a high-resolution real-time 56mm/10 MHz linear-array transducer. Ultrasound images were obtained from the bilateral masseter and temporal muscles at rest and at maximal voluntary contraction. sEMG data were normalized by maximal clenching. Pearlson correlation test was used to discover if the correlation between muscle thickness and sEMG is different or not on two groups analyzed: patients treated to head and neck cancer and health persons.  

Results: Patients that were submitted to cancer treatment revealed negative correlation between sEMG and muscular thickness at a lot of clinical situations tested, differing to health people that do not revealed correlations between this two types of evaluations.

Conclusions: Cancer treatment finalized at 6 months ago, in cases of head and neck cancer, affect the correlation between sEMG and muscular thickness when compared to health people group. In cancer group, when sEMG increase, the muscular thickness decrease; and it was not observed in health group.