Table 1.

PICOS (patients/population, intervention, comparator, outcomes, study design) criteria for inclusion and exclusion of studies.

	Inclusion Criteria	Exclusion Criteria
Population	Adults diagnosed with HNC, receiving RT with curative intent (± concomitant CT)	Patients <18 years of age, cancer with another origin, surgery as only treatment
Intervention	(1) Physical exercise or (2) nutrition or (3) a combination of exercise and nutrition. Initiated at start of RT and conducted during RT. Physical exercise is defined as sessions of muscle strength and/or aerobic exercise. Nutrition is defined as, dietary counselling, oral nutritional supplements or enteral nutrition by nasogastric tube or PEG	(1) Interventions initiated before start or after completion of RT (2) Nutritional interventions consisting only of vitamins or minerals (3) Comparisons of enteral and parenteral solutions (4) Swallowing exercise interventions alone
Comparator	Standard care or placebo
Outcome	Nutritional status (validated assessment instruments, e.g., SGA or PG-SGA), body composition (body weight, BMI, muscle mass or lean body mass, fat mass) and/or objectively measured physical functioning (walk test, handgrip strength, physical or performance battery)	Quality of life, fatigue, feasibility, treatment tolerance or survival as only outcome measure
Study design	RCTs or pilot RCTs	Case series with <10 participants, qualitative studies, reviews, letters, editorials, notes
Setting	No restrictions
Time frame	No restrictions

Abbreviations: HNC: head and neck cancer; RT: radiotherapy; CT: chemotherapy; PEG: percutanous endoscopic gastrostomy; SGA: subjective global assessment; PG-SGA: patient generated-SGA; BMI: body mass index RCT: randomized clinical trial.