Published in

American Society of Clinical Oncology, Journal of Oncology Practice, 10(14), p. 594-602, 2018

DOI: 10.1200/jop.18.00219

Links

Tools

Export citation

Search in Google Scholar

Management of Nasopharyngeal Carcinoma: Is Adjuvant Therapy Needed?

This paper is made freely available by the publisher.
This paper is made freely available by the publisher.

Full text: Download

Red circle
Preprint: archiving forbidden
Orange circle
Postprint: archiving restricted
Red circle
Published version: archiving forbidden
Data provided by SHERPA/RoMEO

Abstract

Nasopharyngeal carcinoma of the undifferentiated histologic subtype is endemic and prevalent in southeast Asia. The dramatic improvement of treatment outcomes and overall prognosis during the past few decades has been attributed to advances in disease screening and diagnosis, diagnostic imaging, radiotherapy techniques, use of combination systemic therapy, and dedicated clinical and biomarker surveillance. The current practice of treating patients with advanced locoregional disease using cisplatin concurrent with conventional fractionated radiotherapy, followed by adjuvant cisplatin and fluorouracil, was established in 1998 when the landmark Intergroup-0099 Study demonstrated a survival benefit with the addition of systemic therapy. There is little doubt regarding the need for concurrent chemotherapy, but there has been uncertainty about the magnitude of the benefit attributed to the adjuvant phase. Furthermore, instead of one-size-fits-all recommendations, it will be ideal if we can tailor adjuvant therapy to high-risk patients only to avoid unnecessary toxicities. In addition, recent evidence suggests that induction chemotherapy before concurrent chemoradiation can achieve better outcomes, especially in distant control, even in the modern era of intensity-modulated radiation therapy. This article provides a comprehensive review of key literature on the current management of locoregionally advanced nasopharyngeal carcinoma and highlights future research directions to unravel these controversies.