Delays Starting Postoperative Radiotherapy Among Head and Neck Cancer Patients: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis.

ABSTRACT:

Objective

Initiating postoperative radiotherapy (PORT) within 6 weeks (42 days) of surgery is the first and only Commission on Cancer (CoC) approved quality metric for head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC). No study has systematically reviewed nor synthesized the literature to establish national benchmarks for delays in starting PORT.

Data sources

Following Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-analyses guidelines, we performed a systematic review of PubMed, Scopus, and CINAHL.

Review methods

Studies that described time-to-PORT or PORT delays in patients with HNSCC treated in the United States after 2003 were included. Meta-analysis of proportions and continuous measures was performed on nonoverlapping datasets to examine the pooled frequen

SUBMITTER: Duckett KA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10840985 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature