Research
Prognostic value of pretreatment and recovery duration of cranial nerve palsy in nasopharyngeal carcinoma
- † Equal contributors
1 State Key Laboratory of Oncology in South China, Sun Yat-sen University Cancer Center, No, 651 Dongfeng Road East, Guangzhou, 510060, People’s Republic of China
2 Department of Nasopharyngeal Carcinoma, Sun Yat-sen University Cancer Center, 651 Dongfeng Road East, Guangzhou, 510060, People’s Republic of China
3 Department of Clinical Trial Center, Sun Yat-sen University Cancer Center, No, 651 Dongfeng Road East, Guangzhou, 510060, People’s Republic of China
4 Key Laboratory of Gene Engineering of the Ministry of Education, School of Life Sciences, Sun Yat-sen University, No, 135 Xingang Road West, Guangzhou, 510275, People’s Republic of China
5 Department of Radiotherapy, Affiliated Cancer Hospital, Guangzhou Medical College, No, 78 Luhu Road, Guangzhou, 510095, People’s Republic of China
Radiation Oncology 2012, 7:149 doi:10.1186/1748-717X-7-149
Published: 7 September 2012Abstract
Background
The purpose of this study was to evaluate the prognostic value of cranial nerve (CN) palsy in nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) patients.
Methods
A retrospective analysis was performed on CN involvement using medical records of 178 consecutive patients with histologically diagnosed, non-disseminated NPC.
Results
In 178 NPC patients with CN palsy, the 5-year survival rates were as follows: overall survival (OS), 61.0%; disease-specific survival (DSS), 69.6%; local relapse-free survival (LRFS), 75.2%; distant metastasis-free survival (DMFS), 73.4%; and disease-free survival (DFS), 55.3%. Significant differences were observed in the 5-year OS rates between patients with single and multiple CN palsy (69.8% vs. 54.3%; P = 0.033) and the OS rates between patients with different pretreatment durations (68.7% vs. 43.3%, P = 0.007). However, no significant differences were observed in OS, DSS, LRFS and DFS rates between patients with upper and lower CN palsy (P = 0.581, P = 0.792, P = 0.729 and P = 0.212, respectively). The results showed that recovery duration was an independent prognostic factor for OS (HR = 2.485; P < 0.001), DSS (HR = 2.065; P = 0.016), LRFS (HR = 3.051; P = 0.001) and DFS (HR = 2.440; P < 0.001).
Conclusions
Recovery duration is an independent prognostic factor for NPC patients with CN palsy and is related to recurrence, which leads to poor survival. Recovery duration requires close surveillance and different treatment regimens.
