Eldridge RC, Pugh SL, Trotti A, et al. - In patients with head and neck cancer (HNC), experts aspired to explore whether posttreatment functional status prognostic of overall survival. Four hundred ninety-five patients had two posttreatment functional assessments measuring diet, public eating, and speech within 6 months in an HNC clinical trial. Study participants were grouped by impairment (highly, moderately, modestly, or not impaired) and determined whether they were improving, declining, or not changing from the first to the second evaluation. According to results, the change in posttreatment patient function strongly anticipated overall survival across all three scales. In diet, patients who refused to be highly impaired had three times the mortality of patients who at both assessments were not impaired. Mortality was statistically comparable to patients with no impairment for patients improving from highly impaired. Overall, the authors concluded that posttreatment functional status is a powerful survival marker in HNC patients.