Can nasal endoscopy be used to detect nasopharyngeal cancer?

The current social environment has caused our chances of contracting nasopharyngeal cancer to increase. Nasopharyngeal cancer is a constant threat to our health. Understanding nasopharyngeal cancer knowledge is helpful for the prevention and treatment of nasopharyngeal cancer. If nasopharyngeal cancer occurs, you should be more careful. At the same time, you should choose a good method for examination after timely understanding. So can a nasal endoscope be used to check for nasopharyngeal cancer? Let's take a look at the following introduction.

1. Nasopharyngeal endoscopy

(1) Indirect nasopharyngeal endoscopy: This is a simple, fast and effective examination method.

(2) Fiberoptic nasopharyngoscopy: This method is relatively simple, but the observation of the posterior nasal aperture and the anterior wall of the nasal cavity is not satisfactory. The posterior nasal aperture, nasal septum, posterior nasal cavity, lateral nasopharyngeal wall, Eustachian tube, lateral fossa, back and posterior wall of the soft palate, etc. can be observed.

2. Clinical Examination

In addition to examining the nasopharynx, nasal cavity, and oropharynx, nasopharyngeal carcinoma also requires examination of the head and face, regional lymph nodes for metastasis, and all body systems.

(1) Head and neck examination: The nasal cavity, oropharynx, external auditory canal, tympanic membrane, eye socket, and soft palate should be examined for any outward extension of nasopharyngeal carcinoma.

(2) Eyes: Common symptoms include decreased or absent vision, exophthalmos, orbital masses, and ptosis of the upper eyelid with fixed eyeballs.

(3) Cranial nerves: Local extension of nasopharyngeal carcinoma often causes damage to cranial nerves, leading to various neurological disorders in the head and face.

3. X-ray examination

X-ray examinations of nasopharyngeal carcinoma patients can help understand the extent of the tumor and the destruction of the skull base, which is helpful for staging nasopharyngeal carcinoma, formulating radiotherapy plans, following up patients and evaluating prognosis. Commonly used X-ray examinations include lateral nasopharyngeal films and skull base films.

4. Radionuclide bone imaging diagnosis

Radionuclide bone imaging is a non-invasive and highly sensitive diagnostic method. It is generally believed that the positive coincidence rate of bone scan in diagnosing bone metastasis is 30% higher than that of X-ray and lesions can be detected 3-6 months earlier.

5. CT examination

CT examination of nasopharyngeal carcinoma can reveal the location of the tumor in the nasopharyngeal cavity, whether the lumen is deformed or asymmetric, and whether the pharyngeal recess is shallow or blocked. In addition, it can also show the invasion outside the nasopharyngeal cavity, such as metastasis to the nasal cavity, oropharynx, parapharyngeal space, submental fossa, carotid sheath area, pterygopalatine fossa, maxillary sinus, ethmoid sinus, orbit, intracranial cavernous sinus, and retropharyngeal and cervical lymph nodes. Nasopharyngeal endoscopy has outstanding value in the diagnosis of tiny tumors in the cavity, which are often not found by X-ray films and CT; however, most of the posterior and lateral wall tumors are submucosal invasive growths, which are difficult to be found by nasopharyngeal endoscopy, but can be clearly shown by lateral nasopharyngeal films and CT.

The above not only introduces nasopharyngeal carcinoma to you, but also introduces some methods of treating nasopharyngeal carcinoma. I hope it will be helpful to patients with nasopharyngeal carcinoma.