Approach to cancer – integrated or standalone?

Cancer is considered to be a lifestyle disease which in view of general public is synonymous with morbidity and mortality. Head and neck cancers have a multifactorial aetiology but are generally associated with risk factors like smoking, alcohol or tobacco consumption and exposure to certain environmental carcinogens. The progress of the disease may follow an indolent course in some patients while a rapid downhill course may be encountered in other aggressive variants. In all patients, a sequential change is seen in a normal cells where they initially convert into dysplastic cells followed by a cancer cell bearing no similarity to the parent cell.