How to treat recurrence of nasopharyngeal carcinoma

How to treat recurrent nasopharyngeal carcinoma?

1. The most important method for treating nasopharyngeal carcinoma is radiotherapy. Since the nasopharyngeal cavity is deep and narrow, and surrounded by many important blood vessels, nerves, lymphatic tissues, etc., the geographical location of nasopharyngeal carcinoma makes surgical treatment very difficult and difficult to radically remove.

2. Since most nasopharyngeal carcinomas are poorly differentiated cancers and are more sensitive to radiotherapy, the cervical lymph node areas are easy to locate and expose to the irradiation site, and radiotherapy can completely cover these areas. Therefore, radiotherapy is the first choice for treating nasopharyngeal carcinoma.

3. The treatment of recurrent NPC is mainly salvage treatment, and radiotherapy can also be considered. There are two treatment methods for salvage surgery of recurrent NPC: surgery to improve the infratemporal fossa approach and surgery to externally rotate the maxilla. Some patients with recurrent NPC can be cured after surgery. According to statistics, if recurrent NPC does not invade the skull base bone, the 5-year survival rate after surgery is 70%; if it invades the bone but not the cavernous sinus and intracranial cavity, the 5-year survival rate after surgery is 30%; if it invades the intracranial cavity or cavernous sinus, the surgical effect will be very poor.

4. Always pay attention to the development of the disease. Once nasopharyngeal carcinoma recurs, treatment measures should be taken in time. Generally, the prognosis of patients with recurrent nasopharyngeal carcinoma is particularly unsatisfactory. Patients should adopt clinically reliable treatment methods, including traditional Chinese medicine treatment, surgical treatment, external radiotherapy and intracavitary radiotherapy, and appropriately strengthen external radiotherapy or gamma knife radiotherapy.