Beatrice Manduchi, Postdoctoral Research Fellow at MD Anderson Cancer Center, shared a post on LinkedIn about an article she and her colleagues authored:
“Excited to share our new paper in Radiotherapy and Oncology examining how individual patient-reported MDASI-HN symptom items discriminate imaging-graded dysphagia in HNC patients treated with radiotherapy.
Overall this work supports using simple, low-burden symptom thresholds to detect dysphagia and trigger timely referral.
Key insights:
– A combined Swallow/Choke items metric ≥ 2 detects >75% of patients with any dysphagia (DIGEST ≥ 1), supporting early identification and intervention.
– Higher, traditional thresholds (≥6) are specific for moderate–severe dysphagia but miss early dysfunction.
– Rather than single cutoffs, we offer a framework of data-informed threshold selection based on clinical intent: whether the goal is early risk flagging, therapy referral, or prioritizing patients with more advanced impairment.”
Title: Individual patient-reported symptom items discriminate imaging-graded dysphagia in head and neck cancer patients treated with radiotherapy: secondary analysis of pooled prospective studies
Authors: Beatrice Manduchi, Taylor C. Jefferson, Amy C. Moreno, Carly E. A. Barbon, Meagan Whisenant, Rosemary Martino, Clifton D. Fuller, Katherine A. Hutcheson
Read The Full Article.
