ABSTRACT
Introduction: Restricted mouth opening is a long-termsequelae of head neck cancer treatment. This is a majorconcern as it leads to multiple problems in maintenanceof oral hygiene, speech, chewing, swallowing, prostheticrehabilitation, and follow-up intra-oral examination. Inthis study, our aim was to assess maximum mouth opening(MMO) amongst postoperative oral cancer patients withor without conventional radiotherapy over a period ofone year.Material and methods: A prospective longitudinal study wasdone in oral cancer patients, within three years, to compareeffect of post-operative radiotherapy (PORT) on MMO overa follow-up period of one year with control of post-operativecases without radiation. Level of significance was set at alphalevel 0.05.Results: Among 18 patients of PORT and 19 patients ofcontrol group, repeated measure ANOVA were significantfor the following parameters: within subject effect in eachgroup; between subject effect and interaction effect of monthand radiation. Multiple pairwise comparison showed MMOat 3rd, 6th, 9th and 12th month were significantly different inPORT group, in comparison to preoperative MMO. In thecontrol group however, only postoperative MMO at 1st monthwas significantly different. After one-year, mean MMO, inPORT and control was 32.56±4.29mm and 46.37±4.65mm,respectively and total trismus in radiotherapy group was66.67% and that of control group was nil.Conclusion: Conventional radiotherapy in oral cancer patientscan lead to high rate of trismus as a late effect. Strict exerciseprotocol along with close monitoring is recommended to havebeneficial effect to the patients.