Page 120 - Functional impairment and cues for rehabilitation of head and neck cancer patients -

Chapter 5
Baseline characteristics
Baseline characteristics are presented in Table 1. Of the 108 included patients, 73 (67%) were male, 53 patients (49%) had an ACE-27 score > 0 indicating comorbidity, 49 patients (45%) had sarcopenia, 35 patients (32%) had a tumor located in the base of tongue, 80 (74%) had stage IV disease and 70 (68%) were HPV positive. There were no significant differences regarding these characteristics between the patients present at the different assessments. Patients who were excluded because only t0 data was available (n = 34), had higher tumor stages, and had more often a modified diet pretreatment (FOIS < 7) and trismus. Patients who were eligible but not included in the study (n = 84) were comparable to the included patients with regard to patient, tumor and treatment characteristics. However, baseline BMI, SMM, presence of sarcopenia, FOIS and mouth opening were not available for these patients.
Of the 108 included patients, 42 were treated with RT only (39 by tumor indication and 3 because they were unfit for systemic therapy), and 66 with RT+ (49 with cisplatin and 17 with cetuximab). Patients treated with RT+ more often had pretreatment sarcopenia, obviously had higher tumor stages, and more often had HPV negative tumors. All baseline characteristics categorized by treatment modality are presented in Appendix 2.
Figure 3 Percentage of patients with subjective and objective functional limitations at t0, t1 and t2. Abbreviations: SHI = speech handicap index, VSA = vowel space area.
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