AHRQ Effective Health Care Program - Research Reviews

Comparative Effectiveness and Safety of Radiotherapy Treatments for Head and Neck Cancer
Key questions published 17 Aug 2007

Draft Key Questions Comment Period from 17 Aug 2007 to 14 Sep 2007

Draft Research Review Comment Period open until 22 Aug 2009
Draft Complete

Final Key Questions
Draft key questions for this topic were posted for public comment. Key questions were finalized after review of the comments, assignment to an Evidence-based Practice Center and discussion with technical experts.

1. For patients with head and neck cancer, how effective is IMRT--compared with 3DCRT and other relevant RT techniques --at reducing normal tissue toxicity and reducing radiation-induced adverse events? Do patients who receive IMRT have better quality of life compared with those who receive 3DCRT or other approaches?

2. For patients with head and neck cancer, what is the effectiveness of IMRT--compared with 3DCRT and other relevant RT techniques--for improving local control, prolonging time to recurrence, or improving survival?

3. Are there specific tumor characteristics or anatomic locations, or specific patient subpopulations (e.g. older vs. younger) for which IMRT would provide greater benefit than does 3DCRT or other RT techniques?

4. Is there evidence of wider variation in outcomes when using IMRT compared with 3DCRT, either because of differences in user experience (years of experience with IMRT, number of patients treated with IMRT, formal training in IMRT), differences in target volume delineation (gross tumor volumes, clinical target volumes, planning target volumes, lymph node regions, organs at risk), or dosimetric parameters (dose to targets, dose constraints for organs at risk)?

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