ArticleBMC cancer2025
A two-phase study investigating the quality of life benefit of additional 0.5% cocaine mouthwash to institutional standard of care mucositis management in head and neck cancer patients undergoing radiotherapy or chemoradiotherapy.
Article in BMC cancer, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
0 citing papers in PubMed.
No citing paper in PubMed yet.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
8 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundMucositis remains a challenging complication of radiotherapy or chemoradiotherapy (CRT) for head and neck cancer (HNC) patients. There is limited data on the safety or effectiveness of cocaine mouthwash to treat mucositis.
methodsThis was single centre, prospective sequential cohort study in HNC patients undergoing CRT. Patients were allocated to the standard of care mucositis management (SOC) or SOC + 0.5% CMW (CMW). We assessed the benefit of CMW in the management of mucositis on patient reported quality of life (QoL) using the EORTC QLQ-C30 and H&N35 questionnaires at baseline, during CRT, at 1- and 3-months follow-up.
resultsOf 137 eligible patients,64 were included in each arm. Baseline characteristics were similar between the arms. Most patients were male (84%) who received 70 Gy of radiation (71%) with concurrent systemic therapy (74%). Up to 69% of patients had grade 2 or 3 mucositis and up to 78% of patients required prescription for opioid analgesia, but no consistent or clinically meaningful differences were observed between the arms. Morbidity was high without significant differences observed between SOC and CMW with high hospitalisation rates (49%) and need for enterostomy feeding (29%). There were significantly more patients with > 5% weight change from baseline to 3-months post treatment in the SOC (56.3% vs. 40.6%, p = 0.024). Rate of opioid analgesia prescription were not consistently different between the arms. No significant differences were observed in patient reported QoL between SOC and CMW (adjusted and unadjusted), or when assessed using a 10-point clinically meaningful difference threshold (p > 0.05).
conclusionIn HNC patients undergoing CRT, the addition of CMW to SOC management did not demonstrate any patient reported quality of life improvement or harm.
trial registrationThe study was retrospectively registered with the Australian New Zealand Clinical Trials Registry (ACTRN12625000158460) on 11 February 2025.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.