Retrospective Investigation of OralAgents Used for Management ofMucositis in Patients With Head andNeck Cancer Receiving Radiotherapyand Chemotherapy

Aim: This study was conducted as a retrospective descriptive study with the aim ofinvestigating the oral agents used for management of mucositis in patients with head andneck cancer receiving radiotherapy and chemotherapy.Material and Methods: The study was conducted in Dr. Abdurrahman Yurtaslan OncologyEducation and Research Hospital Radiation Oncology Clinic. The sample of the studycomposed hospital records of 46 patients who were staying at the clinic to get radiotherapyand chemotherapy cures plannned for treatment after diagnosis between May 2012 and May2015. Data was collected by using a file review form developed by the researcher, degrees oforal mucositis which had already been evaluated according to the WHO oral toxicity scaleand was present in patient files were added into the review form. Non-parametric statisticsincluding Mann-Whitney U Test and Kruskal Wallis Test for group comparisons andSpearman’s correlation analysis for relations among quantitative variables were used.Results: Of the patients with head and neck cancer, 39.1% were 61 years old and older, 84.8%were men, 45.7% had laryngeal cancer. During the treatment period while mucositis was notobserved in 13% of the patients, Grade 2 oral mucositis was observed in 30.4% of the patients,Grade 3 in 26% of the patients and Grade 4 in 17.3% of the patients. In 4.4% of patients havinggrade 2 oral mucositis mixture of sucralfat-lidocain was used, in 6.6% of patients having grade3 oral mucositis nystatin+chlorhexidin+L-Glutamin was used and in 10.9% of patients withgrade 4 oral mucositis oral L-Glutamin was used.Conclusion: In the direction of results obtained in this study, it was recommended thatrandomized controlled studies on the effectiveness of the oral care agents used in themanagement of oral mucositis in the patients receiving head and neck radiotherapy shouldbe conducted and effective use of the oral care agents, effectiveness of which are provenaccording to the guides, should be provided.