Abstract
BACKGROUND: Cranial nerve involvement at disease presentation of nasopharyngeal carcinoma was not uncommon. We investigated the prognosis of patients with T4-locally advanced NPC, with or without cranial nerve involvement, and compared the outcome of patients treated using different radiotherapy techniques. METHODS: In this retrospective study, 83 T4-locally advanced NPC patients were diagnosed according to the seventh edition of the American Joint Committee on Cancer staging system. All patients were treated using three-dimensional conformal radiotherapy (3D-CRT) or intensity-modulated radiation therapy (IMRT). The survival rate was analyzed using the Kaplan-Meier method. RESULTS: The 5-year overall, locoregional-free, and disease-free survival rates of patients treated using IMRT were 88.9%, 75.2%, and 69.2%, respectively. The outcome in these patients was significantly better than that in patients treated using 3D-CRT, with survival rates of 58.2%, 54.4%, and 47.2%, respectively. There was no significant difference in the 5-year overall, locoregional-free, and disease-free survival rates of the patients with (64.2%, 60.5%, and 53.5%, resp.) and without (76.9%, 63.6%, and 57.6%, resp.) cranial nerve involvement. CONCLUSION: Locally advanced NPC patients treated using IMRT had significantly better outcomes than patients treated using 3D-CRT. Our results showed that the outcome of T4 NPC patients with or without cranial nerve involvement was not different.