Acquired unilateral alopecia after arterial infusion chemotherapy in a recurrent nasopharyngeal carcinoma.

BACKGROUND

Intractable nasopharyngeal hemorrhage is a severe complication with high mortality rate in patients with radiation therapy (RT) for nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) that requires emergency treatment. Quite a few of them combine with tumor recurrence. Treatment planning for these patients is extremely difficult for oncologists, and effective treatments are lacking.

CASE

A 42-year-old man had a history of recurrent NPC that was treated with 2 cycles of chemoradiotherapies from 2017 to 2019. Five months after the second round of chemoradiotherapy, an episode of massive nasal bleeding occurred. As positron emission tomography (PET) scan revealed tumor recurrence in the left wall of nasopharynx, superselective embolization and subsequent intra-arterial infusion (IA, 4 times of cisplatin 60 mg + fluorouracil 1.0 g) were performed to stop bleeding and achieve tumor control. To date, the disease-free survival time has been over 1 year. No tumor recurrence or rebleeding is found except for alopecia on the left side.

CONCLUSIONS

Interventional radiology is important and effective in the treatment of recurrent NPC for both massive nasal bleeding and tumor control. However, the unique complication of unilateral alopecia should not be ignored.