Dustin Hoffman’s best-known films, such as The Graduate and Kramer vs. Kramer, are regaining appeal as a result of their availability on streaming platforms such as Prime Video, Netflix, and Hulu. Though few people are aware of it, Hoffman, who is now 83, has survived throat cancer. Some celebrities choose to fight cancer in private, while others utilize their disease as an opportunity to raise awareness. It is critical to accept this decision because it is really personal.

Hoffman’s spokesperson, Jodi Gottlieb, told People in 2013 that while Hoffman kept his disease hidden, “it was detected early and he has been surgically cured.” By then, he was 75 years old. Hoffman played an unemployed actor in the 1982 film Tootsie, who changes into a woman in order to advance his profession. Sydney Pollack, a director, was his agent.

Gottlieb added, “Dustin is feeling great and in good health,” but declined to expand. People said that the two-time Oscar winner planned to take “doctor-recommended preventative treatments to minimize the chance of a recurrence in years to come.” Three years before Hoffman’s announcement, Michael Douglas bravely announced his 2010 diagnosis of throat cancer in a film for the Oral Cancer Foundation, detailing how the HPV virus might cause the sickness at a time when the infection was still vilified.

Hoffman has yet to discuss his struggles in public, yet he continues to work. His most recent project, As Sick As They Made Us, in which he costarred with Candice Bergen, is still in pre-production, most likely because to the epidemic. We will always appreciate his amazing body of work, even as we wait for something new. Furthermore, we would be foolish not to include his 1995 film Outbreak, which drew in new audiences while the country was struggling with a real-life pandemic.

Throat Cancer and HPV. Fewer people are aware that HPV can cause mouth and throat cancers, despite the fact that many are aware of the virus’s association with cervical cancer. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), alcohol and tobacco use can lead to throat cancer. According to Dr. Jessica Geiger, a medical oncologist at Cleveland Clinic Cancer Center, new study reveals that HPV could be responsible for up to 60-70% of these tumors.

According to Dr. Jessica Geiger, throat cancers caused by the HPV virus are more likely to recover than tumors caused by tobacco use. Positively, Dr. Geiger emphasizes that HPV-related throat cancers are often highly responsive to chemotherapy and radiation treatment. “The cure rates for people who have HPV-related disease are a lot higher than those who have tobacco-related throat cancer.”

Throat Cancer Symptoms and Signs. Dr. Geiger previously told SurvivorNet that “the most common symptoms for throat cancer are a painless neck mass that the patient may just feel when they’re shaving or washing their face.” “Oftentimes, we have patients who are referred from their dentist’s office,” she explained. “They’ll notice a sore that doesn’t appear to be healing, or a wound on the inside of their mouth or near their teeth.

Then we schedule a biopsy for the patients to confirm cancer or to rule out something else, and we go forward from there.” “Sometimes it’s painful, but a lot of times they don’t feel anything except just a lump there,” explained Dr. Geiger. “Their doctors often then will order imaging such as an ultrasound of the neck or a CAT scan and we can see the mass there.”

Options for Throat Cancer Treatment “In early-stage throat cancer, the cancer is confined to just what we call the primary tumor in the back of the throat or the tonsils, or the base of the tongue,” said Dr. Geiger. Hoffman obtained his first film role in 1967’s The Graduate, at the age of 29. His cinematic career took off after the film propelled him to immediate popularity.

“But if the PET scan shows that the cancer has moved to the lungs or the liver, then our approach would not be to cure cancer but to treat it and to keep it under control,” she continues. “It’s quite complicated since there are three stage fours. “It’s not like breast cancer, where once you reach Stage 4, you’re incurable,” she says. “In more advanced throat cancer cases, which is actually the most common stage that we see,” she says, “in addition to the primary tumor, lymph nodes of the neck are involved.”

“Patients who have disease that has spread outside of the head and neck region, meaning below the clavicles, into the lungs or into the liver, we call that distant metastatic disease and by definition, those patients are considered incurable,” she continues. “So our efforts at treatment would be focused on palliative therapy, controlling the disease but, unfortunately, not curing it.”