Abstract
Head and neck cancers present an important part of all malignancies worldwide and the incidence of some of its subtypes is rising constantly. Most important risk factors are smoking and alcohol consumption, but in the last decade evidence has been accumulated that a part of head and neck cancers is caused by the infection of human papillomaviruses.
HPV had already been established as an etiological factor of cervical cancer in women. HPV infection is most frequently detected in tonsillar cancers.
This work gives an overview of current knowledge about the role of HPV in the etiology of tonsillar cancers, describes methods for diagnosis of HPV infection in head and neck cancer patients. Due to the fact that several studies had shown that patients with HPV associated tumors have better prognosis, diagnosis of HPV involvement in these tumors might be an important criterion for selection of patients to the treatment regime.
This article also includes results of studies which were done on the population of patients and controls from the Czech Republic.