How to care after oral cancer treatment?

After the oral cancer treatment the health care team helps the patients return to the normal activities as soon as possible. The main goals of the rehabilitation mainly depends upon the extent of the disease as well as the type of the treatment. This after care may include being fitted with a dental prosthesis which is an artificial dental device and having the dental implants. This can also include speech therapy, dietary counseling, or other services.

In some cases, the surgery that is used to rebuild the bones or tissues of the mouth is not possible. A dentist with special training, also known as a prosthodontist may be able to make a prosthesis for the patient to help them to eat as well as talk normally as they may need a special training to learn to use it. A speech therapist attends the patients in the hospital to plan their therapy as well as teach them with speech exercises which also continues after the patient return home.

The recovery course mainly depends upon the extent of the surgery as well as reconstruction. There are some surgeries, in which the patients usually go back home after a few hours of observation in their recovery room. Whereas there might require to stay in the hospital for 7 to 15 days. They may have to stay longer than 15 days, which can be usually due to some kind of post-operative complication that the mouth cancer doctors may work to improve.

When the doctors determine that a patient is no longer in the need of the in-patient level care, then only the will be ready for discharge from the hospital. This discharge planning process begins well before the patient gets ready to leave the hospital. There are even some patients that can go back home from the hospital with or without visiting nurses or receiving home care, others might go to a rehabilitation or skilled nursing facility for a short while before returning home. The discharge planning team, that mainly includes the doctors, social workers, nurses and physical therapists, along with the patient and the family, will determine the best place for them to go once they’re ready to leave the hospital.
Any additional reconstruction, cosmetic procedures or treatments are usually planned after discharge. This gives the patient time to recover from the initial surgery, get the pathology results of the surgery and make appropriate arrangements for the next steps.