Parotid Patient Q&A

It is parotid patient question and answer day at Parotid Tumor Podcast! Patients often share the same worries, concerns, and experiences as they navigate this diagnosis and treatment process. A great way to educate yourself and to become your own best advocate is by learning through questions that have been asked by fellow parotid patients.  

In this episode, Dr. Eric J. Moore; Chair, Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery, Mayo Clinic; Rochester, Minnesota, joins me to answer patient questions on a variety of parotid related topics. Dr. Moore will be sharing important information about benign and malignant masses, treatment side effects, recurrences, current research projects, and much more!

Listen in as Dr. Moore answers excellent questions that were submitted by the parotid community that will help educate and empower patients!

Please refer to the Chapter Markers for time stamps for each patient question.

Key Talking Points of the Episode:

Enlarged Lymph Nodes vs. Parotid TumorsTreatment of Warthins TumorsUse of Ablation Techniques for Parotid TumorsTreatment Options for Malignant Parotid TumorsTreatment Side EffectsParotid Tumor RecurrencesParotid Tumor Research and Advanced Treatment Options

Key Quotes from the Episode:

“Individualizing treatment is always a good practice.”

“In this country, we are not very keen on the idea of ablation type treatment, such as radiofrequency ablation or injection ablation of benign tumors in the parotid gland….the two problems with doing that in the parotid gland are one, the uncertainty of diagnosis, so you may potentially be ablating a benign tumor that is actually malignant, and the relationship of the tumor to the facial nerve.”

“Every decision to perform surgery or not to perform surgery or to perform any kind of treatment- I’ll even be more general- is a balance between a risk and benefit ratio.”

“What I usually tell patients is you know you have to go into the treatment having faith in your care providers that they are going to do exactly the right thing that they would want done for them to you, and then you have to have faith and positivity that treatment is going to be effective until proven that treatment is not effective and so having a powerful mindset of positivity I think helps you get through this period of adversity as well as anything.”

 “If the facial nerve is intact, it should go back to normal in almost every single circumstance.” 

“I definitely believe that parotid gland surgery volume leads to experience, which leads to better outcomes.”

“To do research requires core groups and funding and numbers of people and numbers of specimens, and those are lacking in many of the parotid gland tumors, and that’s why there is not a whole lot of beneficial research at the basic science level on genomics and novel targeted therapeutics actively being undertaken in those tumors.”

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