A Prospective Study on Therapeutic Gain by Concurrent Chemoradiotherapy for Stage Ⅱ-Ⅳa Nasopharyngeal Carcinoma

The benefit achieved by concurrent chemoradiotherapy(CCR) and sequential chemoradiotherapy(SCR) vs radiotherapy(RT) alone for patients with stage Ⅱ-Ⅳa nasopharyngeal carcinoma(NPC) was compared.A total of 113 patients with stage Ⅱ-Ⅳa NPC were allotted into CCR group(n=38),SCR group(n=36) and RT alone group(n=39).All patients were irradiated with the same RT technique to ≥66 Gy at 2 Gy per fraction,conventional 5 fractions/week in all groups.The CCR group received concurrent chemotherapy of weekly cisplatin for 7 weeks,and the SCR group received neoadjuvant and(or) adjuvant chemotherapy.The results showed that the 3-and 5-year overall survival rate was significantly higher in CCR group than in RT alone group(92.16% vs 61.54%,81.58% vs 51.28%,P<0.005).The median survival time was significantly longer in CCR group than in RT alone group(67.8 months vs 52.7 months,P<0.005).It was concluded that CCR could significantly improve overall survival rate,progression-free survival rate,and median survival time when compared with RT alone.