Conservative treatment in laryngeal cancer. Combined radiotherapy/chemotherapy and/or new radiotherapy fractionation schedules

For patients with early stages of laryngeal carcinomas, the local therapeutic modalities of surgery and/or radiation are the accepted standards of treatment. Recently, combined chemotherapy-radiotherapy and new fractionation schedules have received much attention as an alternative to surgery in patients with resectable locally advanced cancer of the larynx to preserve the larynx function. This article is intended to update the reader on the most recent articles written about the treatment of laryngeal carcinomas. The different points are: the results of conventional radiotherapy, the importance of parameter of radiotherapy (dose, fractionation, overall treatment time), new fractionation schedules, combined chemo-radiotherapy, randomized trial results.