Evaluation of overall survival of nasopharyngeal carcinoma patients treated in ten years at a single institution

Purpose: To evaluate the survival rates and prognostic factors of nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) patients treated in Izmir Oncology Center (IOC). Methods: The survival of 58 NPC patients (median age 52.5 years) treated from 1998 to 2008 were retrospectively analysed. Histological evaluation was based on WHO criteria. AJCC (1997), as well as the new proposed evaluation system by Liu (2008) for clinical staging were used. Most patients received concurrent chemoradiotherapy, some were given neoadjuvant chemotherapy (nCT). Radiotherapy (RT) was delivered by conventional technique to a total dose of 70Gy to the primary tumor and metastatic lymph nodes. Results: The 5-year overall survival, disease-free survival, local failure-free survival, and distant failure-free survival rates were 55, 36, 58 and 59%, respectively. The median overall survival was 55.78 months. WHO type II disease was found in 55.2% of the patients. There was only I lymphoma patient. Concurrent chemoradiotherapy was given to 74.1% and nCT to 12.1% of the patients. Advanced-stage disease was determined in 81.1% of the patients; 27.6% of these had stage IV disease. Early-stage disease was infrequent (6 patients - T1N0 and T2N0) in both staging systems. No significant difference was found between disease-free survival vs. local failure-free survival, and distant failure-free survival vs. local failure-free survival for the different treatment groups (p=0.92). Male patients with WHO type II pathology had a greater risk for distant metastases. Conclusion: Both staging systems yielded similar results with no significant differences in survival rates but male patients and patients with type 11 pathology were at greater risk of distant metastases.