S2645
RTT - Patient experience and quality of life
ESTRO 2026
Digital Poster 290 Validating the EORTC-HN35 and Xerostomia Questionnaire for Patient-Reported Outcomes of Xerostomia During Head and Neck Radiotherapy Ting Chun Lin, Chi Chin Chan, Chi-Hsien Huang, Yu-Rou Chiou, Ji-An Liang Department of Radiation Onoclogy, China Medical University Hospital, Taichung City, Taiwan Purpose/Objective: Xerostomia is the most common and disturbing side effect head and neck (HN) cancer patients encounter during radiotherapy (RT). To assess patients’ subjective outcome of xerostomia, we collected EORTC QLQ- H&N35 and the Xerostomia Questionnaire (XQ) during HN patients’ RT course. This study aims to evaluate the consistency between and compare the results of the two different patient-reported outcomes (PRO) questionnaires in evaluating xerostomia. Material/Methods: Patients receiving HN RT at our department from January to September 2025 were enrolled in this study. Two questionnaires, the Traditional Chinese version of EORTC QLQ-H&N35 and XQ, were administered alternately every two weeks during the RT course at different treatment stages: early (Week 1- 2), interim (Week 3-4), and late (Week 5-6). Each questionnaire took less than 3 minutes to complete.The scores of QLQ-H&N35 (item 41) and XQ were rescaled to 0 to 100 for comparison and were reported as mean ± SD. Agreement and correlation between the two instruments were assessed using concordance correlation coefficients (CCC) with bias correction factor (Cb) and Pearson correlation coefficients. Bland–Altman analysis was applied to evaluate limits of agreement. All statistical analyses were two-tailed with a significance threshold of 0.05 and were performed using R software (version 4.4.3). Results: A total of 21, 18 and 13 patients completed both questionnaires at early stage (Week 1-2), interim stage (Week 3-4), and late stage (Week 5-6). At the early stage (Week 1-2), the mean score (± SD) was 38.1 ± 26.4 for HN35 item 41 and 28.3 ± 19.5 for XQ. At the interim stage (Week 3-4), the mean scores were 48.2 ± 28.5 for HN35 and 41.0 ± 29.2 for XQ. At the late stage (Week 5-6), the mean scores were 74.4 ± 20.0 for HN35 and 45.7 ± 26.1 for XQ.
The CCC was 0.36 (Cb = 0.87), 0.53 (Cb = 0.97) and 0.23 (Cb = 0.53) at the early, interim and late stage, respectively, indicating low to moderate agreement. Pearson’s correlation coefficient was 0.42 (p = 0.063), 0.54 (p = 0.020) and 0.44 (p = 0.130) at the three stages respectively, reflecting moderate correlation. Bland– Altman analysis revealed relatively wide limits of agreement (±50.01, ±54.05 and ±48.86 at the three stages, respectively).
Conclusion: The XQ and HN35 questionnaires demonstrated acceptable reliability in assessing the xerostomia domain. The discrepancy between XQ and HN35 scores increased at the late stage, demonstrating XQ’s advantage in multi-item averaging compared with HN35’s single-item assessment. References: Chambers MS, Rosenthal DI, Weber RS. (2007). Radiation-induced xerostomia. Head Neck, 29(1):58-63. doi: 10.1002/hed.20456.Lin LI. (1989). A concordance correlation coefficient to evaluate reproducibility. Biometrics, 45(1):255-268. https://doi.org/10.2307/2532051Bland JM, Altman DG. (1986). Statistical methods for assessing agreement between two methods of clinical measurement. The Lancet, 327(8476):307-310. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(86)90837-8 Keywords: Patient-Reported Outcomes, Xerostomia Proffered Paper 294 Retrospective insights into patient’s perspectives on tattoos and tattoo less approaches in the implementation of SGRT Leila Begum, Daniel Megias Radiotherapy, Mount Vernon Cancer Centre, London, United Kingdom
Purpose/Objective: The introduction of surface guided radiotherapy
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