Mission & objectives
What is our mission?
At the Head and Neck Cancer Foundation, we are working hard to build awareness of head and neck cancers amongst the public.
We want everyone in the UK to know how to check themselves and know what a normal mouth looks like. Then they can quickly recognise anything that is abnormal and know what to do next.
We are also driving awareness of Sentinel Node Biopsy within the medical industry, by providing training to a new wave of surgeons in order to reduce the impact of surgery on sufferers and enable them to get back to a normal life with minimal impact on a well-exposed area of the body.
We are striving to minimise the impact of head and neck cancer surgery so that patients can maintain a high quality of life post-treatment. We can, with your help, achieve this.
Awareness
We have an ongoing awareness campaign on social media - which shows you just how to check your mouth and what changes you should be looking for. So far, over one million people have watched and shared our video. Early diagnosis can increase the survival rate by 90%! Put simply: our video saves lives!
Watch the video here and please share it with your friends, family and work colleagues - as you could be saving someone’s life.
Training
We are delivering training to cancer centres and theatre teams across the UK in the Sentinel Node Biopsy technique, SNB for short. SNB will revolutionise the management of mouth cancer in the UK and will set the pace for Europe and America. We want to ensure that all cancer centres have access to and are trained in using SNB.
Thirty-one cases of head and neck cancer are diagnosed every single day - that’s one new person facing a life-changing illness roughly every 45 minutes of every day, of every week, of every year. The number of people diagnosed with mouth cancer is growing. SNB can give them hope, greater chances of survival and better outcomes.
Technology
SNB is a very accurate way of establishing when microscopic lumps of cancer cells start to leave the main cancer and begin their migration to other areas of the body. This is a watershed moment in the spread of the disease that completely changes treatment. SNB is NICE-approved so can be deployed in every cancer centre (NHS and private alike) across the country.
Currently, without SNB, all patients undergo a complex three-hour neck dissection. This is traumatic surgery which can now be avoided in many cases, especially when possible cancer is detected early.
Sentinel Node Biopsy reduces the need for major surgery by 70%.