Staging abdominal ultrasonography in nasopharyngeal carcinoma

Abdominal ultrasonograms were performed on 81 unselected patients with newly-diagnosed nasopharyngeal carcinoma without clinical evidence of distant metastases. Two patients had ultrasonographic features suspicious of, but not diagnostic of, hepatic metastases. One of these two patients developed hepatic metastases six months after the examination while the other was free of metastases at follow-up 33 months afterwards. Of the 79 patients without evidence of metastases on ultrasonogram, two developed hepatic metastases after 22 and 32 months. Based on these results, we do not recommend abdominal ultrasonography as a routine staging investigation for nasopharyngeal carcinoma.