Clinical features and survival outcomes between ascending and descending types of nasopharyngeal carcinoma in the intensity-modulated radiotherapy era: A big-data intelligence platform-based analysis

Nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) disproportionately burdens southeast Asia, where the highest incidence is in Southern China [1]. Annually, there are 87,000 new NPC diagnosis, and approximately 70% of patients are classified as locoregionally advanced disease [2]. Radiotherapy (RT) is the primary treatment modality for locoregionally advanced NPC [3], which can be categorized by characteristics of natural disease progression as follows: 1) predominantly advanced local disease with early stage cervical lymph node involvement as ascending type (type A, T3-4N0-1); 2) advanced lymph node disease but early stage local invasion as descending type (type D, T1-2N2-3); and 3) predominantly advanced local disease along with advanced lymph node disease (type AD, T3-4N2-3) [4,5].

Source: Radiotherapy and Oncology - May 14, 2019 Category: Radiology Authors: Ji-Jin Yao, Zhen-Yu Qi, Zhi-Gang Liu, Guan-Min Jiang, Xi-Wei Xu, Shao-Yi Chen, Feng-Ting Zhu, Wang-Jian Zhang, Wayne R. Lawrence, Jun Ma, Guan-Qun Zhou, Ying Sun Tags: Original Article Source Type: research