Opioid therapy vs. Multimodal analgesia in head and neck cancer (OPTIMAL-HN): Results of a randomized clinical trial.

Background: Radiation-induced mucositis (RIM) pain confers substantial morbidity for head and neck cancer (HNC) patients undergoing radiotherapy (RT) or chemoradiotherapy (CRT). With no well-established standard treatment, OPTIMAL-HN aimed to demonstrate the non-inferiority of multimodal analgesia (MMA; analgesic medications with different mechanisms of action) to opioid analgesia alone.

Methods: OPTIMAL-HN (ClinicalTrials.