2022     A number of clinically relevant findings of the landmark OraRad study have been published recently. OraRad is a large multicenter prospective cohort study examining oral complications after radiation therapy (RT) for head and neck cancer. The study team enrolled 572 participants, who were examined prior to RT and then every 6 months until 2 years after RT. Some of the most notable findings include:

2022     Recently published through Springer, Orofacial Supportive Care in Cancer: A Contemporary Oral Oncology Perspective is an easy-to-use book which will equip clinicians and health care professionals with all the information that they need to identify and manage orofacial complications of cancer therapy. 

2021     Our newest guidelines, created jointly with ISOO and ASCO, address the prevention and management of salivary gland hypofunction and xerostomia induced by non-surgical cancer therapies.

2020    Earlier this year, MASCC invited you to recruit and mentor one or more new MASCC members through a new initiative, the Buddy Membership Program. This program was designed to increase our membership and to also to help new members get involved in MASCC activities and take advantage of all our membership benefits.

2020    Throughout the year, we will share articles from the MASCC journal Supportive Care in Cancer. The “Editor’s Pick” section, chosen by the journal’s Editor-In-Chief, Dr. Fred Ashbury PhD, will cover a variety of topics to meet the many interests of our membership.

Chaired by Morten Schiødt, DDS, Dr.Odont (Denmark), the Symposium featured a faculty of 13 widely recognized European experts in MRONJ, who provided updates on recent research in the areas of classification, clinical manifestations, imaging, treatment, and prevention. The speakers included MASCC and ISOO members Bente Brokstad Herlofson, DDS, PhD (Norway) and Ourania Nicolatou-Galitis, DDS, MSc, DrDent (Greece).

2019    A new MASCC/ISOO/ASCO Clinical Practice Guideline on Medication-Related Osteonecrosis of the Jaw has been published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology (JCO) by the American Society of Clinical Oncology. (Yarom N et al, J Clin Oncol 2019 Jul 22:JCO1901186. Epub ahead of print). 

2015    In September, 2014, The European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) published clinical practice guidelines for maintaining bone health in patients with cancer. The guidelines address both multidisciplinary treatments for reducing skeletal effects of metastatic disease and strategies for minimizing treatment-induced skeletal damage. The guidelines article was published in the Annals of Oncology by R. Coleman, J. J. Body, M. Aapro, P. Hadji, and J. Herrstedt on behalf of the ESMO Guidelines Working Group.*

2012    Carolinas HealthCare System (CHS) Receives $8 Million NIH Grant to Conduct First-Ever Study of its Kind. CHS’s Carolinas Medical Center has been awarded an $8 million grant from the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research (NIDCR) to study dental and oral medicine outcomes of patients who have received high-dose radiation to the head and neck region. This is the largest research grant ever awarded to CHS. As the awardee organization, CHS will administer the grant, which will be shared across the several sites involved in the study. Each year 40,000 Americans develop head and neck cancer, and many have to receive high-dose radiation therapy, often in combination with surgery and/or chemotherapy. An unavoidable side effect of radiation therapy is damage to the oral and maxillofacial tissues, some of which persist for the lifetime of the patient.

2012    The Oral Care Study Group conducted a study on the diagnosis and treatment of oral chronic graft-versus-host disease (cGVHD). The study was designed to assess common practices, as well as to determine use of the National Institute of Health scale for the diagnosis and grading of oral cGVHD. The project was headed by Sharon Elad, DMD, MSc, Eastman Institute for Oral Health, University of Rochester Medical Center.