New AI tool to provide better prognosis for patients with head and neck cancer

A team of US researchers has developed and validated an artificial intelligence AIbased noninvasive tool that can predict the risk of head and neck cancer spreadThe AI tool by researchers from the Mass General Brigham could predict the likelihood that a patients oropharyngeal cancer a type of head and neck cancer that develops in the throat will spread It could help doctors by signaling which patients should receive aggressive treatmentOur tool may help identify which patients should receive multiple interventions or would be ideal candidates for clinical trials of intensive strategies such as immunotherapy or additional chemotherapy said senior author Benjamin Kann the Artificial Intelligence in Medicine AIM Programme at Mass General BrighamOur tool can also help identify which patients should undergo deintensification of treatment such as surgery alone Kann addedThe research is published in the Journal of Clinical OncologyTreatments for oropharyngeal cancer including combinations of surgery radiation therapy and chemotherapy can be difficult to tolerate and may have lasting negative effects Therefore its important to identify subgroups of patients who may benefit from less or more intensive treatment approachesOne way to accomplish this involves assessing whether the patient has pathologic extranodal extension ENE which occurs when cancer cells invade beyond the lymph node into surrounding tissue Currently ENE can only be definitively diagnosed by surgically removing and examining lymph nodesThe new AIbased tool helped in imaging data from computed tomography scans and predict the number of lymph nodes with ENE an indicator of a patients prognosis and likelihood of benefiting from intensified therapyWhen the tool was applied to imaging scans from 1733 patients with oropharyngeal carcinoma the tool was able to predict uncontrolled cancer spread and worse patient survival Integrating the AIs assessment into established clinical risk predictors improved risk stratification leading to more accurate predictions of survival and cancer spread in individual patientsThe AI tool enables the prediction of the number of lymph nodes with ENE which could not be done before and shows that it is a powerful novel prognostic biomarker for oropharyngeal cancer that could be used to improve the current staging scheme and treatment planning said KannThis story has been sourced from a third party syndicated feed agencies Midday accepts no responsibility or liability for its dependability trustworthiness reliability and data of the text Midday managementmiddaycom reserves the sole right to alter delete or remove without notice the content in its absolute discretion for any reason whatsoever