Hypothesis: Genetic markers are not currently useful in the clinical care of patients with head and neck cancer.
During the past few years, there has been an explosion in the number of articles investigating genetic markers and head and neck cancer. This is interesting for the scientist but confusing for the clinician. It is difficult to decipher the utility of the "alphabet soup" of molecular markers found in the literature. The genes described are unfamiliar to most otolaryngologists treating patients with head and neck cancer, and the articles are confounded by conflicting data.