Resumen
The impact of the oral microbiome on head and neck cancer is poorly understood. Better characterization of its impact may improve our understanding of the development of the disease and management of disease outcomes. This case?control study seeks to identify differences in the oral microbiome between patients who have head and neck cancer and controls who do not. Furthermore, we seek to identify types of microbial communities based upon abundance and compare those types with survival outcomes. We found that two commensal microbes that are associated with pathologic states when overgrown were more common in head and neck cancer cases than the controls. Furthermore, we identified two community types within our population. The community type with previously established pathogenic microbes had a lower yet non-significant hazard of death compared to the community with a higher abundance of commensal organisms.