Radiotherapy alone with curative intent in patients with stage I extranodal nasal-type NK/T-cell lymphoma

This study aims to evaluate the outcome and pattern of failure in a large cohort of patients with Stage I NK/T-cell lymphoma of the upper aerodigestive tract treated with radiotherapy alone.

The pathological diagnosis was confirmed using standard criteria. All patients were treated with high-dose extended-field radiotherapy alone. The median dose was 50 Gy. The primary tumor was located in the nasal cavity (n = 80), Waldeyer ring (n = 5), or oral cavity (n = 2).

The overall response to radiotherapy was achieved in 85 of 87 (97.7%) patients, with a complete response rate of 95.4% and a partial response rate of 2.3%. The 5-year overall survival, progression-free survival, and local control rates for all patients were 80%, 69%, and 93%, respectively. Twenty patients (23%) had disease progression or relapse. Of these, 15 patients (17%) developed systemic extranodal disseminations, whereas only 4 (5%) patients had local relapse and 4 (5%) patients had lymph node relapse.

Our study suggests that high-dose extended-field radiotherapy alone is a curative therapy and shows favorable clinical outcome in patients with Stage I disease. With the high possibility of local control and primary failure of systemic dissemination, the integration of optimal radiotherapy with more effective systematic therapy is warranted to bring additional improvement to the outcome for these patients.