Page 67 - Functional impairment and cues for rehabilitation of head and neck cancer patients -

METHODS
Design
This was a cross-sectional study on feasibility, validity and reliability of the SPEAD-test. The Medical Ethical Committee of the Netherlands Cancer Institute granted approval for the study (METC19.1262/N17SPE).
Participant selection
Eighty participants, composed of forty healthy individuals and forty individuals treated for HNC, were included in the study. With eighty participants, the expected ICC of the test-retest reliability of 0.8 can be estimated with a confidence interval of 0.1. Two included patients were later excluded from this analysis because one concerned a benign tumor of the tongue and the other concerned a distal esophageal carcinoma. The healthy participants were above age 40 (because 98% of HNC patients are above age 40 (24)) and had no history of or currently present dysphagia according to self-report. They were recruited from acquaintances of the researchers. The patients were a convenience sample, recruited from all patients with HNC (except skin cancer) who received a VFS as part of standard care in The Netherlands Cancer Institute between July 2018 and December 2019. Written informed consent was obtained from all participants.
Participant characteristics
Characteristics of all 78 participants are shown in Table 1. Compared to the healthy subjects, patients were older (median 65 vs. 54 years, p < .001), had a lower BMI (median 22 vs. 27, p < .001) and had a dental prosthesis more often (45% vs. 8%, p < .001). Also, healthy participants were female more often (26% vs 48%, p = .064).
Data collection
The following characteristics were collected from all participants, via a form completed prior to the SPEAD-test: gender, age, length, weight, body mass index (BMI), and the use of a (partial) dental prosthesis. For the patient group, the following additional characteristics were collected from their medical chart: tumor site, T- and N-stage (AJCC 7th edition), AJCC-stage, received treatment and time since treatment. In case a patient was treated for more than one tumor, characteristics of the tumor with the highest stage was recorded.
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The SPEAD-test to objectify swallowing capacity
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