Generally speaking, the organs of each part of the body are likely to develop malignant lesions as they grow older and are affected by germs. Similarly, the nasal and pharyngeal cavities can be attacked by malignant cells and form malignant tumors, which is called nasopharyngeal cancer.
What you don’t know about nasopharyngeal cancer Don’t think that cancer in nasopharynx is far away from us, you should know that China is the country with the highest incidence of nasopharyngeal cancer in the world. According to the World Health Organization, 80% of global nasopharyngeal cancer patients are in our country! The alarming figures do require us to be more vigilant and take precautions. Especially, people in Guangdong, Guangxi, Fujian, Hainan, Jiangxi and other provinces and cities in China should step up prevention. Because the incidence rate of nasopharyngeal cancer in Guangdong Province alone is the highest in the world, so it is also called “Guangdong cancer”, which is the only cancer named after a place, and its high incidence rate can be seen.
The reason why nasopharyngeal cancer has such a high incidence rate in China is that it is more “favored” by the yellow race. Even after emigration, the incidence of nasopharyngeal cancer remains high among yellow people, which can only mean that it is a special ethnicity that leads to a higher chance of occurrence of nasopharyngeal cancer.
In addition to ethnicity, the incidence of nasopharyngeal cancer is also gender specific, with the incidence rate of men being several times higher than that of women. In terms of age, many middle-aged and elderly people between the ages of 40 and 60 are not spared. Therefore, if people of this age group experience unilateral mild nasal congestion, nasal bleeding, hearing loss with tinnitus and dizziness, loss of taste, hoarseness, change in pronunciation, choking cough, persistent mild migraine, protruding eyes, diplopia, painless lumps in the neck, etc., and generally one or more signs exist for more than 2 weeks In general, if one or more of these signs exist for more than 2 weeks and still do not improve, we should pay great attention to prevent further growth of nasopharyngeal cancer malignant cells.
Because the initial symptoms of nasopharyngeal cancer, like most cancers, are not obvious and do not attract people’s attention in any way. Middle-aged and elderly men who often smoke and like to eat salted fish and pickles are more likely to develop nasopharyngeal cancer due to their dietary habits, so they should go to medical institutions for regular medical checkups to detect the budding nasopharyngeal cancer at the first time. In conclusion, strict prevention and attention to the seeds is the key to timely detection and cure of nasopharyngeal cancer.
Radiotherapy is the best way to treat nasopharyngeal cancer. Since 95% of nasopharyngeal cancer belongs to “hypofractionated squamous carcinoma” in medical terminology, it means that the malignancy of tumor cells is very high and it is easy to invade the related tissues around the nasal cavity and pharyngeal cavity, and it is also easy to have lymph node metastasis in the neck, which makes surgery not easy to remove.
In addition, the nasopharynx is located in the center of the skull, which is hidden and adjacent to important organs and tissues, cranial nerves and blood vessels. These make the surgical exposure extremely restricted, and the surgery is very likely to damage the surrounding tissues, which makes the surgery more dangerous. Therefore, the effect of relying on surgery alone for nasopharyngeal cancer is not very satisfactory.
As for adjuvant therapy for nasopharyngeal cancer, there are chemotherapy, biological therapy and Chinese herbal medicine, but it is worth mentioning that, as mentioned above, most nasopharyngeal cancers are “hypofractionated squamous carcinoma”, which means that most nasopharyngeal cancers have high sensitivity to radiation, so radiation therapy can kill tumors more efficiently and directly. This means that most nasopharyngeal carcinomas are highly sensitive to radiation, so radiation therapy can kill the tumor cells more efficiently and directly, thus controlling the primary lesion and the lymph node drainage area in the neck within the irradiation field more easily. This method is also more effective in terms of efficacy. The five-year survival rate of patients with nasopharyngeal cancer after radiotherapy can reach more than 50%, and the cure rate of patients with early-stage nasopharyngeal cancer can achieve 78% to 95%. It is clear that radiotherapy is the treatment of choice for nasopharyngeal cancer.