To understand the symptom clusters of patients with indwelling tracheal cannula after head and neck cancer surgery, and to identify the sentinel symptoms of different symptom clusters.

A total of 197 patients with head and neck cancer who underwent surgical treatment in Department of Head, Neck and Thyroid Surgery in Cancer Hospital Affiliated to Zhengzhou University (Henan Cancer Hospital) from June 2020 to December 2021 were selected as the research objects by the convenient sampling method. On the 7th day after surgery, general information questionnaire and Anderson Symptom Inventory, Head and Neck Module were used, and exploratory factor analysis was used to extract symptom clusters. Apriori association analysis was used to identify sentinel symptoms in the symptom clusters.

There were 4 symptom clusters in patients with indwelling tracheal cannula after head and neck cancer surgery, including head and neck cancer-specific symptom cluster, pain-digestive tract symptom cluster, voice/swallowing disorder symptom cluster and fatigue-sleep-emotional symptom cluster. Oral and throat mucus was the sentinel symptom of head and neck cancer-specific symptom cluster, nausea was the sentinel symptom of pain-digestive tract symptom cluster, numbness and needling sensation were the sentinel symptom of voice/swallowing disorder symptom cluster, sadness was the sentinel symptom of fatigue-sleep-emotional symptom cluster.

Patients with indwelling tracheal cannula after head and neck cancer surgery have more symptoms, which are combined into symptom clusters, and sentinel symptoms exist in each symptom cluster, suggesting that medical workers should take sentinel symptoms as the entry point for symptom cluster management to achieve effective management of symptoms.

Head and neck neoplasms; Tracheal cannula; Symptom cluster; Sentinel symptom