Prediction model for early percutaneous endoscopic gastrostomy (PEG) in head and neck cancer treatment

Head and neck cancer patients are prone to nutritional problems, partly due to the location and size of the disease, due to significant comorbidity and also often therapeutic intervention. Excessive weight loss after surgery reduces further the patients' physical resistibility and increases the complication rate for adjuvant radiation and or chemotherapy. Possible effective interventions are dietary counseling, nutritional supplements or drug interventions. Aim of our research was to reveal reliable clinical predictive parameters, which calculate risks as the reduced nutritional state against the possible complications of PEG insertion and finally define an algorithm for pre-therapeutic PEG insertion to optimize the general treatment conditions by sufficient nutrition. We explored the data of 152 patients in a time period from 2005 to 2010 considering age, gender, body mass index, staging, size and localization of the tumor or need for a neck dissection. The decisive predictive parameters are: body mass index, size and localization of tumor, lymph node affection, resection of the root of the tongue or the oropharynx region and performance of a neck dissection. In this retrospective study we established a prediction model that allows a substantiated evaluation of post-therapeutic dysphagia considering relevant clinical features as well as the specific surgical therapy. From this assessment derives the indication of a safe pre-therapeutic application of a percutaneous endoscopic gastrostomy (PEG).