Treatment Outcomes and Prognostic Factors of Nasopharyngeal Carcinoma

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Nasopharyngeal carcinoma is an uncommon disease that is usually found in the advanced stage becuase its anatomical location makes early detection difficult. Radiation therapy or concurrent chemoradiation therapy is mainstay for treatment of nasopharyngeal carcinoma. We evaluated clinical characteristics and treatment outcomes of nasopharyngeal carcinoma and assessed prognostic factors related to survival. SUBJECTS AND METHOD: We retrospectively reviewed medical records of 87 patients who were treated for nasopharyngeal carcinoma from 1994 to 2013. Clinical characteristics, pathologic type, stage, treatment modality, recurrence and survival were investigated. RESULTS: The mean follow-up period was 66.7 (12-232) months. Recurrence rates were not significantly different between the radiation therapy group and combined chemoradiation groups in the early stage (27.3% vs. 21.6%, p=0.644) and the advanced stage (21.4% vs. 31.3%, p=0.496). Five-year overall survival and disease free survival rate was 74.0% and 58.9%, respectively. Five-year overall survival rate of the combined chemoradiation therapy group was significantly lower than that of the radiation therapy group (64.4% vs. 94.1%, p=0.001). Distant metastasis was significantly correlated with survival in multivariate analysis. CONCLUSION: In this study, the five-year overall survival rate was better in the radiation therapy group than in the combined chemoradiation group. This might be related to the fact that advanced stage disease was more common in the combined chemoradiation group. Further studies with larger study samples and longer follow-up are necessary to verify these results and determine optimal modalities for the treatment of nasopharyngeal carcinoma