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. 2025 Jul;47(7):1977-1988.
doi: 10.1002/hed.28094. Epub 2025 Feb 24.

Advanced Stage Head and Neck Cancer Diagnosis: HEADSpAcE Consortium Health Systems Benchmarking Survey

Grant Creaney  1   2 , Mariél de Aquino Goulart  1   2 , Alex McMahon  1 , Claire Paterson  2   3 , James McCaul  4 , Sandra Perdomo  5 , Laura Mendoza  6 , Laia Alemany  7 , Lidia Maria Rebolho Arantes  8 , Paula Andrea Rodriguez Urrego  9 , Tom Dudding  10 , Mirana Pring  10 , Marta Vilensky  11 , Cecilia Cuffini  12 , Silvia Adriana Lopez de Blanc  13 , José Carlos de Oliveira  14 , Shahid Pervez  15 , Pierre Saintigny  16 , Mauricio Cuello  17 , Jaroslav Betka  18 , Luis Felipe Ribeiro Pinto  19 , Maria Paula Curado  20 , Kazem Zendehdel  21 , Lorenzo Richiardi  22 , Maja Popovic  22 , José Roberto de Podesta  23 , Sandra Ventorin von Zeidler  24 , Ricardo Mai Rocha  23 ; HEADSpAcE Consortium  5 ; Shaymaa Alwaheidi  5 , Paul Brennan  5 , Shama Virani  5 , Al Ross  25 , David I Conway  1   2
Collaborators, Affiliations

Advanced Stage Head and Neck Cancer Diagnosis: HEADSpAcE Consortium Health Systems Benchmarking Survey

Grant Creaney et al. Head Neck. 2025 Jul.

Abstract

Background: Globally, most people with head and neck cancers (HNCs) are diagnosed with advanced-stage disease. HNC diagnostic stage has multifactorial explanations, with the role of health system factors not yet fully investigated.

Methods: HNC centres (n = 18) from the HEADSpAcE Consortium were surveyed via a bespoke health system questionnaire covering a range of factors. Centres were compared using the least square means for the presence/absence of each health system factor to their proportion of advanced-stage HNC.

Results: Health system factors associated with lower proportion in advanced-stage diagnosis were formal referral triaging (14%, 95% CI-0.26, -0.03), routine monitoring of time from referral to diagnosis (16%, 95% CI-0.27, -0.05), and fully publicly funded systems (17%, 95% CI-0.29, -0.06). Several health systems factors had no routinely available data.

Conclusions: Through identifying and monitoring health systems factors associated with lower proportions of advanced stage HNC, interventions could be developed, and systems redesigned, to improve early diagnosis.

Keywords: diagnostic pathway; head and neck cancer; health systems; stage at diagnosis.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

Figures

FIGURE 1
FIGURE 1
HEADSpAcE HNC diagnostic pathway. [Color figure can be viewed at wileyonlinelibrary.com]
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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