Sample size {14}
dysphagia, HNC
DYSPHAGIA
It is not possible to predetermine accurately the number of participants because the study is exploratory. Indeed, to our knowledge, no acoustic cough-related features have ever been reported as biomarkers of P/A in the framework of dysphagia. The study therefore starts with healthy subjects to obtain reference data. The minimal number of participants has been fixed based on the empirical rule that the number of participants has to be larger than 30 so that the average feature value approximates the mean feature value irrespective of the underlining distribution, provided that the mean and variance are finite. We have decided on a number of 40 HNC patients with RAD (and, consequently, 40 healthy participants for comparison) based on the available number of oncological follow-up consultations and taking into account refusals or drop-outs.The preliminary conclusions will be based on the comparison with healthy volunteers of acoustic and aerodynamic features of HNC patients reporting RAD. A pilot group of 10 HNC patients without RAD (CTCAE score = 0) is also included in this study.