Efficacy of Chemotherapy in Survival of Stage I Nasopharyngeal Carcinoma.

PURPOSE

To identify whether chemoradiotherapy improves survival of stage I nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC).

MATERIALS AND METHODS

NPC patients were extracted from the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results database between 2010 and 2015. Pathologically confirmed stage T1N0M0 (the 7 edition AJCC) were investigated. Overall survival (OS) and cancer-specific survival (CSS) were compared between the radiotherapy and chemoradiotherapy groups using the Kaplan-Meier method and propensity score matching (PSM) analyses.

RESULTS

This study included 91 (40.27%) patients in the chemoradiotherapy group and 135 (59.73%) patients in the radiotherapy group. Before PSM, chemoradiotherapy was associated with worse 3-year OS (74.31 87.23%; = 0.025) and 5-year OS (64.28 83.12%; = 0.001) compared to those associated with radiotherapy. Similarly, chemoradiotherapy showed worse 3-year CSS (87.01 96.97%; = 0.028) and 5-year CSS (80.39 96.97%; = 0.002) than those of radiotherapy. After PSM, chemoradiotherapy revealed worse 5-year OS (63.10 82.49%; = 0.031) and CSS (80.95 93.70%; = 0.016) than radiotherapy. The multivariate regression analysis revealed that chemoradiotherapy was an independent risk prognostic factor for OS and CSS before and after PSM.

CONCLUSION

Radiotherapy alone is recommended for stage I NPC patients.