Eldridge RC, Pugh SL, Trotti A, et al. - In a secondary analysis of a large randomized clinical trial of patients with head and neck cancer (HNC), researchers evaluated the potential advantage for monitoring posttreatment patient performance and provided simple, concrete time points for future studies. The study sample consisted of 495 patients who had two posttreatment functional assessments measuring diet, public eating, and speech within 6 months. Study participants were grouped by impairment (highly, moderately, modestly, or not impaired) and determined whether they improved, declined, or did not change from the first assessment to the second. According to results, the change in posttreatment patient function strongly anticipated overall survival across all three scales. In diet, patients who declined 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. In patients with HNC, posttreatment functional status is a strong prognostic marker of survival.