Mucositis – prevention and therapy

Side-effects are critical challenges in cancer therapy. These complications can threaten the quality of life, sometimes the life itself. One of the most frequent side effects is mucositis, the damage of mucosa, either in the oral cavity (oral mucositis, OM), or in the gastrointestinal tract (gastrointestinal mucositis, GIM). Prevention is a key action for the effi cient supportation. Recognition of OM is relative easy, but of GIM is rather difficult. The risk factors could come from the patients and/or can be caused by the therapy. The successful management of mucositis mostly depends on the cooperation of the patient, which is highly infl uenced by the success of care (e.g. decreasing the level of pain). In general, mucositis (especially oral mucositis) a well managable disease, burt more informations are required to increase the quality of prevention and therapy. Such expectation could be realized by specific and sensitive biomarkers, however, they are still missing.