To answer these questions your doctor will need to do the following things:
talk with you about your medical history. This includes signs you may have noticed, any other health conditions, medications that you are taking, and whether you smoke or drink alcohol
perform a physical examination by feeling and looking inside your throat and neck
order diagnostic tests, which may include scans.
Common tests include:
Your doctor will look inside your nose and throat using a very thin flexible tube with a tiny light and camera on it (called an endoscope). This can be done in an office or clinic.
This uses X-rays to take pictures of the inside of the body. If a person has cancer, a CT scan can help the doctor to see where it is, measure how big it is, and if it has spread into nearby organs or other parts of your body.
This uses magnetic fields, to take pictures of the inside of the body. This helps your doctor see how far a cancer has grown into the tissue around it. Not all people with oropharyngeal cancer need a MRI scan.
This is a whole body scan that uses a radioactive form of sugar which can show if the oropharyngeal cancer has spread to the lymph nodes or elsewhere in the body.
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