Overview
Your soft palate is the back part of the roof of your mouth. Soft palate cancer is one of several kinds of oropharyngeal cancer. It happens when squamous cell carcinoma cells multiply and create cancerous tumors. Soft palate cancer is often found before it can spread, making it easier to treat with surgery to remove tumors.
Is soft palate cancer common?
No, it’s not. Soft palate cancer is a type of oropharyngeal cancer. About 53,000 people in the U.S. are diagnosed with oropharyngeal cancer each year. Soft palate cancer accounts for about 5% to 12% of all oropharyngeal cancer. Given that data, soft palate cancer affects 2,000 to 6,000 people. For comparison, lung cancer affects more than 236,000 people annually.
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