Responsiveness of the EAT-10 to Clinical Change in Head and Neck Cancer Patients with Dysphagia

Abstract

<i>Purpose:</i> This retrospective study evaluated the external responsiveness of the Eating Assessment Tool-10 (EAT-10) to clinical changes in a single cohort (<i>n</i> = 105) treated with chemoradiotherapy (CRT) or radiotherapy (RT) for head-and-neck cancer.<i>Method:</i> Patients completed the EAT-10 four times: (I) Within two weeks of commencing (C)RT, (II) in the final week of (C)RT, (III) two weeks post-(C)RT and (IV) following discharge from speech-language pathology services. Data was compared to their oral intake status, using the Functional Oral Intake Scale (FOIS).<i>Result:</i> Using Cohen's <i>d</i>, changes in the EAT-10 and FOIS were comparable, however, a difference was observed at data-point IV. At data-points I, II and III, the EAT-10 had a strong negative correlation with the FOIS (Spearman's ρ= -0.81, -0.80 and -0.81 resp.). At data-point IV the correlation strength decreased (Spearman's ρ= -0.69). Fisher's Z transformation found no statistically significant correlation coefficient differences between data-points I, II and III. A significant difference in correlation was found between these data-points and data-point IV (<i>p</i> = 0.027; <i>p</i> = 0.039 and <i>p</i> = 0.022 resp.). A very high internal consistency was found (Cronbach's α > 0.95) for all data-points.<i>Conclusion:</i> This study's results indicate that the EAT-10 has weaknesses in the external responsiveness and has redundancy of its question items.