Year: 2023
Type: article
Abstract: Timeliness and multidisciplinary coordination have long been recognized as 2 hallmarks of quality cancer care.These quality pillars are especially relevant in the treatment of locally advanced head and neck cancer (HNC), which is founded on precise patientcentered coordination of a multiteam system (eg, interdependent teams of surgical, radiation, and medical oncology teams). 1 Recognizing the importance of timely, coordinated multidisciplinary care in improving outcomes and equity in patients with HNC, the American College of Surgeons/Commission on Cancer selected initiation of adjuvant radiation therapy within 6 weeks of surgery as its first-ever quality metric for HNC.This metric aligns HNC with other disease sites (eg, breast, colon, lung) that also measure quality in terms of timely, coordinated multidisciplinary adjuvant therapy, recognizes the recommendation by the National Comprehensive Cancer Network guidelines that postoperative radiation therapy (PORT) start within 6 weeks of surgery for HNC, and highlights the well-characterized quality gap in this space.2 This metric is at present generalized to all postoperative settings and remains informational in nature, and it will necessarily be adapted to the subtleties and complexities of practice as more discriminating clinical data are obtained.Against this background, the timely article by Dayan et al 3 in this issue of JAMA Otolaryngology-Head & Neck Surgery makes a number of important contributions.In their multicenter retrospective cohort study, Dayan et al analyzed the prevalence of treatment delays (surgery to PORT interval [S-PORT]; radiation therapy interval [RTI]) and their association with oncologic outcomes (overall survival [OS], disease-free survival [DFS]) among 1368 patients with oral cavity cancer from 8 academic centers across Canada.
Authors: Evan M. Graboyes, Sue S. Yom
Language: English
Topic: Head and Neck Cancer Studies
Subfield: Otorhinolaryngology
Field: Medicine
Domain: Health Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W4383681788