Pretreatment swallowing assessment in head and neck cancer patients

Pretreatment Dysphagia Inventory and videofluorographic swallowing study as prognostic indicators of early survival outcomes in head and neck cancer

“…In the current study, we assessed pretreatment dysphagia to determine the effect of the tumor itself, excluding the role of therapy. Pretreatment swallowing function in patients with HNSCC has been investigated in a small number of studies, which demonstrated a low rate of aspiration, in accordance with the current results. Patients with early stage tumors are less likely to complain of swallowing problems than patients with advanced‐stage tumors .…”

“…Pretreatment swallowing function in patients with HNSCC has been investigated in a small number of studies, which demonstrated a low rate of aspiration, in accordance with the current results. Patients with early stage tumors are less likely to complain of swallowing problems than patients with advanced‐stage tumors . This also supports our results, indicating a poor correlation between VFSS findings and scores on the MDADI and demonstrating that none of the VFSS findings were significant predictors of 2‐year OS or DFS.…”

“…Few studies have investigated subjective complaints of dysphagia and/or objective measures of swallowing function in patients with HNSCC before treatment . In the current study, we investigated the relation between patients' complaints of dysphagia and the actual swallowing function, as assessed objectively by pretreatment VFSS.…”

Swallowing outcomes in patients with oropharyngeal cancer undergoing organ‐ preservation treatment

“…Because pretreatment instrumental swallowing evaluations were not present for all patients, we are unable to determine whether physiologic changes accounted for this risk or whether patient sensitivity to changes in the swallowing system before treatment may be predictive of their ability to adapt to such changes during/after treatment. Given the known risk for silent dysfunction in the pretreatment state, we are not able to definitively rule out pretreatment dysfunction in this series. It is possible that pretreatment dysfunction might increase the potential for long‐term dysphagia, and, therefore, patient outcomes in this series.…”

Supracricoid laryngectomy and dysphagia: A systematic literature review

“…Despite aforementioned observations, this review has limitations. Only two studies mentioned or measured preoperative swallow function, although dysphagia in patients with laryngeal cancer can be seen before and after treatment . Other limitations include the retrospective design of almost all studies and the fact that despite excluding studies with a patient population of 20 or less, subdivision within some of the studied populations led to smaller subgroups.…”