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Article History

Received: 5 February 2021

Accepted: 21 April 2021

First Online: 30 April 2021

Declarations

:

: Our institutional review board (ethics committee of the Medical Faculty of Leipzig University, vote 1786–15-01062015) approved the current study. We had to concede that we will (1) only do retrospective analyses; (2) thereafter may inform a patient’s doctor about the outcome of our assessments but only whenever the patient reported to his/her physician about participation in our study and availability of potentially relevant data obtained e.g. from the questionnaires. The only exception from this rule was the last question in the questionnaire about the patient’s wish to have organized an appointment with a psycho-oncologist. As we are ENT physicians and HNC specialists but not psychologists, this only question was evaluated immediately, and the patient, whenever desired, referred to a psycho-oncologist, whereas all the other responses were recorded and questionnaires’ results analyzed later. The Ethical Committee explicitly approved the study with this delayed analysis of questionnaires by non-professionals. Patients participating in the current study provided informed consent in written form.

: Not applicable.

: The authors declare that they have no competing interests.