The effect of adjuvant chemotherapy for nasopharyngeal carcinoma: a preliminary report

In the past, radiation therapy was the main treatment modality in nasopharyngeal cancer, but recently, combined induction chemotherapy has become a trend. In this study patients with NPC were divided into two groups. In Group I, 46 cases were treated with chemotherapy (Cisplatin + 5-Fu) and radiation. In Group II, 49 cases were given radiation only. The side effects of chemotherapy were tolerable except for 2 dropouts due to intractable vomiting and semi-coma respectively. Only 17 cases got leukopenia and one case was graded I in BUN evaluation. All of the cases were within normal limits in the platelet and creatinine evaluation. Nine cases acquired hyponatremia. The response rate was 72.7% in the primary site which included 22.7% of the complete response and 50.0% of the partial response with a 80.0% response rate in neck site, which included 56.7% of complete response and 23.3% of partial response. But after the consecutive radiation, the differences of response rate did not show any significance between the two groups. The difference in the response rate between non-keratinizing and undifferentiated carcinoma were significant.