Long-term efficacy of concurrent chemoradiation therapy on patients with nasopharyngeal carcinoma

The objective of the study is to analyze and evaluate the long-term efficacy of concurrent chemoradiation therapy and the impact of other related factors to the prognosis of patients with nasopharyngeal carcinoma. A total of 897 cases of patients with nasopharyngeal carcinoma who were treated in our hospital in the period from December 2007 to February 2010 were divided into two groups according to the different treatment methods. The first group consists of 769 cases of patients treated with radical radiation therapy alone (radiotherapy group), and the second group consists of 128 patients treated with a combination of radical radiotherapy and chemotherapy (chemoradiotherapy group). While both groups of patients were subjected to the same modes of radiotherapy, an additional 2-3 cycles of concurrent chemotherapy were conducted for the second group of patients (using DDP + 5-Fu + BLM or DDP + 5-Fu). The overall 5-year survival rate of all patients was 51.23%, the 5-year survival rate among patients in the radiotherapy group was 48.46% and the 5-year survival rate of the chemoradiotherapy group was 56.80%. These results were found to be statistically significant (P <0.05). A multivariate stepwise regression analysis indicated that different N staging of nasopharyngeal carcinoma had a very significant effect (P <0.0001) for the patients’ survival. In addition, the different T staging also significantly affected (P <0.05) the patient's survival. The type of treatment (radiotherapy or chemoradiotherapy) administered can also have a significant impact on the prognosis, whereby the chemoradiotherapy group patients’ survival rate was significantly higher than the radiotherapy group (P <0.001). The implementation of concurrent chemoradiotherapy show long-term beneficial effects for naso-pharyngeal carcinoma patients. In particular, chemotherapy has a greater impact towards the survival of N2 and N3 stage nasopharyngeal carcinoma patients.Abstract: The objective of the study is to analyze and evaluate the ...