The Danish Head and Neck Cancer fast-track program: a tertiary cancer centre experience

During the 1990s, all Nordic countries except for Denmark experienced a general increase in 5-year survival rates for cancer patients. In 2007, the Danish National Board of Health in collaboration with national multidisciplinary cancer groups and the Danish regions initiated fast-track clinical pathway solutions. The objectives of this study were 1) to present the setup of the head and neck cancer (HNC) fast-track program at Odense University Hospital (OUH) as an example of the Danish model and 2) to present patient characteristics, diagnostic outcome, cancer detection rate, and duration of the fast-track patient courses. From 1st July 2012 to 1st September 2015, all patients referred to the HNC fast-track program at OUH for diagnostics and treatment were consecutively included in the study resulting in 3165 patient courses. The overall malignancy detection rate was 40.6% and for HNC it was 29.2%. The overall median fast-track course duration was 12 days (range 0–74). Overall 2990 (94.5%) of 3165 patients completed their fast-track course within the maximally permitted course duration. Based on our findings, it was concluded that: 1) a HNC fast-track program build on pre-booked slots for diagnostics and treatment is feasible and can secure acceptable course durations for more than 90% of patient courses, 2) by using private ENT specialists as a ‘filter-function’, an acceptable detection rate can be achieved. •This is the first presentation of a nationally established head and neck cancer (HNC) fast-track program.•Our HNC fast-track program takes care of patients from GP general practitioner suspicion to start of initial treatment.•A HNC fast-track program build on pre-booked slots can secure acceptable course durations for more than 90% of the patients.•By using private ENT specialists as a “filter-function”, an acceptable detection rate can be achieved.•In our HNC fast-track program, 94.5% of the patient courses complied with the maximally permitted course duration.