Building Centers of Excellence for Pediatric Head & Neck Tumors

In this episode of BackTable ENT, Dr. Gopi Shah leads a panel discussion about building centers of excellence for pediatric head and neck tumors. She invites Dr. Daniel Chelius (Baylor College of Medicine/Texas Children’s Hospital), Dr. Jeff C. Rastatter (Feinberg School of Medicine, Lurie Children’s Hospital), and Dr. Anthony Sheyn (University of Tennessee Medical School, St. Jude Children’s Hospital) to speak about their experiences and advice for establishing these centers of excellence.

First, the three panelists discuss their career paths to becoming pediatric head and neck cancer surgeons. Then, they share their motivations for building these centers of excellence at their own institutions. All of them realized the importance of routing complex and rare pediatric cancer cases to centralized hospitals and experienced surgeons who saw high volumes of the same cases. Additionally, they saw the need for multidisciplinary collaboration with surgeons in the fields of plastic surgery and oncology. Finally, these centers of excellence facilitate the formation of multidisciplinary tumor boards for pediatric cancer cases.

Additionally, they discuss the important elements they needed to form their centers of excellence of pediatric head and neck tumors. First, they needed support within their own otolaryngology division for a shared vision of division specialization and focused expertise. They also needed to form strong relationships with different specialties, namely pediatric plastic surgery and pediatric general surgery. Another important aspect was the institutional commitment of the affiliated children’s hospitals, which were tasked with patient outreach referrals. Finally, each center of excellence needed to be an open environment in which asking for advice and thinking outside of the box was encouraged.