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The region's only hospital devoted entirely to cancer prevention, research, and treatment presents a series to help you make sense of the cancer news we hear every day. Now on KYW News Radio, 1060 AM.

This Week a Listener Asks:

Q: My father is 80 years old and has a cancerous tumor next to his jawbone.  His primary physician is doubtful that he can safely undergo the lengthy, complicated surgery required to remove the tumor and rebuild the jaw.  What are our options?

A: This week a listener asked whether an elderly patient should undergo complicated surgery to remove a tumor next to his jawbone.
This procedure can take up to 20 hours and involves both removing the tumor and reconstructing the jaw using a bone from the lower leg.
However, Fox Chase is using a game-changing technology that makes better outcomes possible for more patients. 
Working from a CAT scan, a virtual computer model is developed to reconstruct the jaw.  This pioneering work by Fox Chase reconstructive surgeons Drs. Neal Topham and Sameer Patel, in collaboration with our head and neck cancer surgeons, customizes the bone for reconstruction, cutting surgical time in half. 
Fox Chase is the sole provider of this patient-specific technology in the region and one of only four nationally.

Here at the Center

For more on this week's conversation, learn more about Head and Neck Cancer.

For more on the last conversation, learn more about Inflammatory Breast Cancer.

Or read more on any of our conversations

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If you have a question about cancer, submit it here. Then listen to KYW News Radio 1060 to hear our Top Doc cover these general topics of interest about current cancer treatment and research.

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