Metastatic retropharyngeal lymph nodes in nasopharyngeal carcinoma: imaging criteria

Nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) is the most common nasopharyngeal neoplasm and has a high propensity for developing regional neck adenopathy NPC arises most often in the fossa of Rosenmuller and differs significantly from other head and neck cancers with respect to its incidence etiology clinical behavior and treatment NPC is commonly associated with retropharyngeal nodes As retropharyngeal nodes are anatomically difficult to approach for biopsy/fine-needle aspiration cytology imaging plays a critical role in their detection and staging The paper by Zhang et al reports data on 303 NPC patients from a large center in China and highlights specific radiologic criteria for assessing retropharyngeal nodal metastases in nasopharyngeal carcinoma