Pretreatment and midtreatment measurement of oxygen tension levels in head and neck cancers

Abstract

While there is variability both in the pretreatment oxygenation of head and neck cervical metastases and in the change in tumor oxygen tension during treatment, there appears to be a decrease in the overall oxygenation of the tumors. The dramatic increase in very low oxygen measurements may reflect selective survival of radioresistant or chemoresistant hypoxic tumor cells. Cells at the very low level would be expected to be radiobiologically hypoxic (resistant to radiation-induced cell kill).