Generally, malignant tumors that occur in the top and side walls of the nasopharyngeal cavity are called nasopharyngeal carcinoma. It is one of the highly prevalent malignant tumors in China, and the incidence rate is the highest among otorhinolaryngological malignant tumors. Common clinical symptoms include nasal congestion, blood in the nose, hearing loss, congestion in the ear, double vision and headache.
Due to the deep and narrow location of nasopharyngeal cavity, there are many important blood vessels, nerves and lymphatic tissues in its vicinity, and most patients usually have lymph node metastasis in the neck when they are diagnosed. In general, nasopharyngeal cancer can be completely controlled or cured after adequate radiotherapy. Therefore, radiotherapy is the treatment of choice for nasopharyngeal carcinoma.
Most of the cancers with low differentiation, starting from a relatively high malignancy, are more sensitive to radiation, which provides favorable conditions for radiotherapy.
Secondly, there will still be some hidden cancer cells after nasopharyngeal cancer surgery, which are prone to recurrence. Moreover, many patients with nasopharyngeal cancer visit hospitals due to lymphatic metastasis in the neck, and the lymph nodes in the neck are often removed or cleared, which not only increases the complexity of treatment, but also adds pain to patients and affects the final cure rate. There are also hospitals that do not know enough about the disease or blindly apply new technologies, as a result, patients with early-stage nasopharyngeal cancer experience disease recurrence and progression within a short period of time and need to receive radiotherapy again, which should not happen.
It has been proved that the cure rate of nasopharyngeal cancer through modern radiotherapy has increased from 30% in the 1950s to more than 80% now, and the 5-year control rate of early-stage cases has even reached more than 90%. Even if some patients with nasopharyngeal cancer have developed lymph node metastasis in the neck or cranial nerve damage, radiotherapy may enable patients to achieve long-term survival.
With the development of medical technology, cancer has been treated in a variety of ways. When treating nasopharyngeal cancer, patients should bear in mind that the treatment of nasopharyngeal cancer must be early detected, early diagnosed and early treated, and comprehensive treatment should be carried out according to different stages of disease development in order to improve the treatment effect.