Assessment of Trismus among Patients with Head and Neck Cancer

Abstract

 Background: Trismus means the inability to open the mouth more than 35 mm, it is also called restriction of the mouth opening, and negatively affects eating, drinking, and speech, as well as the difficulty of the mouth cleaning. In addition, the Trismus in patients with head and neck cancer may be caused by an increase in the size of the tumor that affects the chewing muscles or tissue fibrosis as a result of surgery or radiation.

Study Aim: The present study aims to determine the incidence of trismus among patients with head and neck cancer.

Methods: A descriptive, cross-sectional study design was conducted national teaching hospital of oncology in Al-Najaf Al-Ashraf City. Anon-probability (purpose sampling technique was used to select 91 patients with head and neck carcinoma. Descriptive statistics like frequency, mean, standard deviation, percentage and inferential statistics, were used to analyze the study data.

Results: The study found the patient-related trismus suffering from mild to severe trismus (16.5 %, vs. 11.0 %).

Conclusion: Our study results showed that the most of participant patients had been jaw movement problems that can have affected by location, duration, and treatment of cancer.