Development of NTCP models for head and neck cancer patients treated with three-dimensional conformal radiotherapy for xerostomia and sticky saliva: The role of dosimetric and clinical factors

Dose distributions in the minor salivary glands in patients receiving 3D-CRT have limited significance with regard to patient-rated symptoms related to salivary dysfunction. Besides the parotid and submandibular glands, only the sublingual glands were significantly associated with sticky saliva. In addition, reliable risk estimation also requires information from other factors such as age and baseline subjective scores. When these selected factors are included in predictive models, instead of only dose volume histogram parameters, model performance can be improved significantly.