Cancer of nasopharynx in young patients

From 1961 to 1980 17 patients with nasopharyngeal carcinoma who were less than 30 years old at time of diagnosis were treated at the two oncologic hospitals in Puerto Rico. Fourteen of the tumors were lymphoepitheliomas and the remaining three were anaplastic carcinomas. Ninety-four percent of the patients were found to have neck adenopathy at the initial examination and in 65% of them the adenopathy was bilateral. The 5-year actuarial survival was 14. The main cause of failure was the distant metastasis. Seventy-one percent of our patients developed distant metastasis sometime during the course of their disease. Carcinoma of the nasopharynx is uncommon in Puerto Rico as in other western countries. The post-adolescent age incidence peak reported from different countries is also present among Puerto Ricans.