About the Authors

Zhongqiu Wang

Contributed equally to this work with: Zhongqiu Wang, Wei Guo

Affiliations Department of Head and Neck Surgery, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas, United States of America, Department of Radiology, East Hospital, Tongji University School of Medicine, Shanghai, China

Erich M. Sturgis

Affiliations Department of Head and Neck Surgery, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas, United States of America, Department of Epidemiology, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas, United States of America

Wei Guo

Contributed equally to this work with: Zhongqiu Wang, Wei Guo

Affiliations Department of Head and Neck Surgery, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas, United States of America, Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery, Beijing Tongren Hospital, Capital Medical University, Beijing, China

Xicheng Song

Affiliations Department of Head and Neck Surgery, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas, United States of America, Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery, Yuhuangding Hospital of Qingdao University, Yantai, China

Fenghua Zhang

Affiliations Department of Head and Neck Surgery, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas, United States of America, Department of General Surgery, Hebei General Hospital, Shijiazhuang, China

Li Xu

Affiliation Department of Head and Neck Surgery, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas, United States of America

Qingyi Wei

Affiliation Department of Epidemiology, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas, United States of America

Guojun Li

gli@mdanderson.org

Affiliations Department of Head and Neck Surgery, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas, United States of America, Department of Epidemiology, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas, United States of America

Competing Interests

The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Author Contributions

Conceived and designed the experiments: ZW EMS WG XS FZ LX QW GL. Performed the experiments: ZW EMS WG XS FZ GL. Analyzed the data: ZW EMS WG LX GL. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: EMS QW GL. Wrote the paper: ZW EMS WG LX QW GL.