The main measure to deal with nasopharyngeal cancer is radiotherapy, which is not suitable for surgery because of its special location. However, when the dose of radiotherapy is high, it will easily cause damage to oral mucosa, bones, muscles and blood, and patients will often have oral ulcers, painful eating, dry mouth, sputum and difficulty in swallowing. If there is an infected lesion in the mouth, it will easily lead to radiation osteomyelitis, which is not only difficult to treat but also causes great trauma to the patient’s mouth.
What are the side effects of radiotherapy for nasopharyngeal cancer?
1.Dry mouth: In general radiotherapy for nasopharyngeal cancer, the irradiation field includes most of the parotid tissue. If radiotherapy is continued, the dryness of the mouth worsens, and the patient cannot eat and needs to be fed with soup, and the function of the parotid gland is obviously damaged. One year after radiotherapy, some patients’ dry mouth slightly improved. With the recent application of new equipment and technology of radiotherapy, this side effect is gradually reduced and decreased.
2. Acute radiation reaction of oral cavity and oropharyngeal mucosa: pain in the oral cavity or pharyngeal cavity and difficulty in swallowing can occur at 20-30Gy of radiotherapy (1/3 to 1/2 of the radical treatment amount). As the radiation therapy dose increases, the symptoms keep worsening. Examination reveals mucosal congestion, bleeding erosion, and lamellar pseudomembrane formation in the oral and pharyngeal cavities within the irradiation area. If the patient can tolerate the radiation therapy, it is not necessary to interrupt the radiation therapy, give a high vitamin and high protein diet, and maintain oral hygiene. If the patient’s reaction is particularly serious, suspend radiotherapy, and give rehydration support therapy and use antibiotics and hormones. 3. Radioactive skin reaction: the skin color of the irradiated area will become red, then turn brown, and even molt. If wet skin reactions such as blisters and ulcers occur. At this time, radiation therapy should be suspended, keep the local skin dry, clean, external anti-inflammatory drugs, avoid using alcohol, iodine and other irritating disinfectants.
Radiation encephalitis and myelitis: normal brain tissue and spinal cord have a certain tolerable dose of radiotherapy (40Gy-50Gy), when this dose is exceeded, it will cause damage to brain tissue or spinal cord in the radiotherapy field, and most of this damage is irreversible. The main manifestations are paralysis, dullness, speech difficulty, etc.
5.Soft tissue fibrosis in the head and neck radiotherapy area: mainly manifested as muscle sclerosis in the neck muscles, chewing muscles and other muscles, some of which are as hard as plates. When there is lymph node metastasis in the neck, in order to give the amount of lymph node eradication, this radiotherapy sequelae is often left behind, and once it occurs, it is not easy to recover, but in most cases, in order to eradicate cancer, certain side effects appear as a last resort situation. The application of blood-activating drugs will be helpful.