Katrina Mason

and 8 more

1. The overwhelming majority of patients referred into secondary care with suspected head and neck cancer (HNC) do not have cancer (~95%). 2. During the COVID-19 pandemic telephone triage of patients with suspected HNC was necessary. During this time, a validated HNC risk-calculator, HaNC-RC-v2 (a set of symptomatology-based questions) was recommended by ENT UK to stratify patients into high or low risk of having HNC via telephone triage [(1)](#ref-0001) 3. Ufonia, a digital health company which uses an Artificial Intelligence (AI) voice assistant to automate clinical conversations via telephone, and *INSTITUTION*, were awarded an SBRI Healthcare grant to help develop an AI-delivered HNC triage telephone call. This was based on the HaNC-RC-v2 and co-created with HNC patients from the Heads2Gether charity via round-table discussions and one-to-one sessions. 4. Twenty-nine patients underwent a clinician-supervised AI-delivered HNC triage conversation as part of their standard telephone consultation. 100% of calls were completed with an average agreement of 89% between the clinician and the AI system for all symptoms asked. The technology was highly acceptable to patients with a median net promoter score (NPS) score of 8 out of 10. 5. Novel technologies involving AI automated telephone calls can be generated to remotely triage suspected HNC patients. This technology may offer an exciting opportunity to help departments triage suspected HNC referrals in an ever increasingly resource pressurised NHS.

Delali Adjogatse

and 8 more

Introduction Treating locally advanced laryngeal squamous cell carcinoma (LSCC) with primary chemoradiotherapy (CRT) can preserve the larynx without compromising survival. However, whether this is associated with good functional outcomes remains up for debate. The aim of this study was to evaluate survival and functional outcomes in patients with locally advanced LSCC treated with primary CRT. Methods We retrospectively analysed data from all consecutive patients with stage III-IV (M0) disease treated with primary CRT between April 2010 and December 2017. Study endpoints were overall survival (OS), disease free survival (DFS), laryngectomy free survival (LFS), laryngo-oesophageal dysfunction free survival (LEDFS) and functional preservation rates. Prognostic factors were assessed by univariate and multivariate analysis. Results 69 consecutive patients treated with primary CRT were analysed. All patients were treated with Intensity Modulated Radiotherapy (IMRT). 29 patients received induction chemotherapy prior to CRT. 60 patients (87%) received concomitant platinum-based chemotherapy, and 9 (13%) concomitant Cetuximab. The median follow-up was 57 months (range 4-96). The completion rate for prescribed RT was 98.5%. The 2- and 5 year OS rates were 81.1% and 52.1%. For patients with T3 disease, the 2- and 5 year OS rates were 82.4% and 61.6%. Positive nodal status, N2b-N3 nodal staging, or stage IV disease were associated with poor OS on univariate, but not multivariate, analysis. Functional preservation was 69.1% at 2 years in all patients alive (68.1% in T3 patients). The 2-year LEDFS rate was 52%. The 2- and 5-year LFS rates was 72.4% and 43.3% respectively. There was no significant difference in LFS rate between primary tumour localization, baseline laryngeal fixation or cartilage invasion. Conclusion Our study illustrates survival and functional outcomes in line with contemporary studies. The survival and function preservation rates suggest that carefully selected patients with locally advanced LSCC can successfully be treated with larynx-preserving primary CRT.