Oral Care for Patients with Head and Neck Cancers

Objectives: There are frequent complications such as infection and necrosis after operation for patients with head and neck cancers. It has been suggested that oral care reduces by approximately 75% of these complications. Furthermore, oral care accelerates the onset of oral nutrition after operation. However, limited number of hospitals has reported the effects of oral care. Team oncology for the head and neck cancers was established on September, 2007 at Okayama University Hospital. The team member consists of ear, nose, and throat doctors, plastic and reconstructive surgeons, dentists, pharmacists, nurses, dental hygienists, nutritionists, speech pathologists and social workers. The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of oral care for the hospitalized patients with head and neck cancers in an acute hospital.

Methods: Sixty-six hospitalized patients with head and neck cancers were included. Among 66 patients, 37 received professional oral care in the Clinic of Preventive Dentistry, Okayama University Hospital. Professional oral care included oral hygiene instruction, professional tooth brushing, cleaning of tongue and oral mucosa membrane with a sponge brush, topical application of moisturizer and fluoride, scaling and root planing by dentists and dental hygienists. A matched case-control study was done to compare days of hospitalization, days of fever, and ratio of feverish days during hospitalization between 10 cases with oral care and 10 controls without. Mann-Whitney U test was used for the statistical analysis.

Results: The ratio of feverish days during hospitalization in patients with oral care (0.1±0.1) were lower than that of patients without (0.5±0.9) (p<0.05).

Conclusion: It was suggested that oral care could reduce the ratio of feverish days during hospitalizations for patients with head and neck cancers.