“This is yet another application of technology-enabled sharing of information generated at home,” said ASCO President Bruce E. Johnson, MD, FASCO, noting that a similar study last year showed better patient-reported experience and overall survival.
Such technology will likely be increasingly used to obtain timely information that ultimately leads to a reduction in complications, he speculated.
“This information in head and neck cancer is particularly important because patients commonly get a lot of side effects when attempting to swallow enough fluids, such that some centers end up putting a feeding tube into the stomach because it’s so difficult to swallow,” added Dr. Johnson, who is also a professor of medicine at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and a leader of the Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center Lung Cancer Program, Boston. “So this is a particularly important clinical application in cancer.”
Study details
The trial population consisted of 357 patients undergoing radiation therapy for head and neck cancer. “We believe that this is the first and largest study of its kind in head and neck cancer,” Dr. Peterson said.