Research

Energy balance

Higher body mass index (BMI) is associated with improved overall and disease-specific survival in patients with HNSCC, with obese and overweight patients showing significantly better outcomes than normal-weight patients.

For HNSCC patients, maintaining a higher BMI (overweight or obese range) may be protective against mortality during radiotherapy. This suggests that aggressive nutritional support to prevent weight loss and preserve fat and muscle mass is crucial, as these reserves provide metabolic protection.

GoodSupportsHIGH confidence
Increased BMI was associated with significantly improved survival (HR per 1-U increase in BMI, 0.91; 95% CI, 0.87-0.96; P < .001)... Overweight (HR, 0.42; 95% CI, 0.24-0.73; P = .002) and obese (HR, 0.30; 95% CI, 0.15-0.55; P < .001) patients demonstrated increased overall survival compared with normal-weight patients.
Aaron J. Grossberg et al. · JAMA Oncology · 2016

Why this rating

Large retrospective cohort with strong statistical significance and consistent findings across survival metrics.

Source

Association of Body Composition With Survival and Locoregional Control of Radiotherapy-Treated Head and Neck Squamous Cell Carcinoma

Aaron J. Grossberg et al. · JAMA Oncology · 2016

DOI 10.1001/jamaoncol.2015.6339

cohort · n=190Cited 241×
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DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10

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