ABSTRACT
PURPOSE: The first treatment of choice for nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) is radiotherapy as NPC is more responsive to radiotherapy than any other head and neck cancer. We analyzed the clinical characteristics and prognostic factors of NPC patients treated at the Severance Hospital. SUBJECTS AND METHOD: Charts of 123 patients diagnosed with NPC at the Severance Hospital from 1995 to 2002 were reviewed and retrospectively analyzed. They were staged according to the 1997 AJCC criteria. According to the WHO classification, the type I included 14 cases, type II 44 cases, and type III 65 cases. Sixty-five cases were treated with radiotherapy only and 58 cases were treated with a combined modality of chemotherapy and radiotherapy. RESULTS: The factors for a poor prognosis were age over 47 years' old, histologic findings of WHO type I and advanced T, N stage. The overall 5 year survival rate was 66.22%. According to treatment modality, only the radiotherapy group was 68.6%, while the chemoradiotherapy group was 63.6%. There was no difference in survival (p>0.05). In chemoradiotherapy group, the survival of induction chemoradiotherapy group was 82.1% and the concurrent chemoradiotherapy group was 36.8%. There was significant difference in survival. CONCLUSIONS: There was no significant difference in the 5 year survival rate between the patients who were treated with radiotherapy only and those who were treated with both radiotherapy and chemotherapy.