Agata Gawryszuk, Hendrik P Bijl, Monique Holwerda, Gyorgy B Halmos, Jan Wedman, Max J H Witjes, Anton M van der Vliet, Bart Dorgelo, Johannes A Langendijk
BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: In a separate article (PART 1), a rationale and explanation of the physiology-and-anatomy-based concept of Functional Swallowing Units (FSUs) was presented. FSUs are swallowing muscles not included in the set of commonly defined swallowing organs at risk (SWOARs). They are involved in three crucial swallowing components: hyolaryngeal elevation (HLE), tongue base retraction (TBR) and tongue motion. This paper is a continuation of PART 1 and it provides detailed computed tomography (CT)-based delineation guidelines for FSUs, which presumably are also at risk of radiation-induced dysphagia...
January 2019: Radiotherapy and Oncology