Nasopharyngeal carcinoma occurs in a hidden location and is adjacent to important organs such as eyes, ears, nose, throat, skull base bone and brain nerve, and has the biological behavior that it is easy to infiltrate directly under the mucosa to adjacent organs or metastasize to lymph nodes, so the symptoms are variable or not obvious and often neglected by patients or doctors. Only by mastering the clinical manifestations of suspected nasopharyngeal carcinoma can we detect the disease as early as possible and seize the best treatment time to achieve early detection, early diagnosis and early treatment.
Clinical manifestations of suspected nasopharyngeal carcinoma: 1. Nasal congestion: nasal congestion can occur when the nostril is blocked by tumor. When the tumor is small, the nasal congestion is lighter, and as the tumor grows, the nasal congestion will increase, mostly unilateral. If the tumor blocks the posterior nostril bilaterally, bilateral nasal congestion may occur.
2.Headache: It is a common symptom, accounting for 68.6%. It may be the first symptom or the only symptom.
3.Blood in the nose: In the early stage, there may be bleeding symptoms, such as blood in the sputum after nasal aspiration or blood in the nose when blowing. In the early stage, there is only a small amount of blood in the sputum or in the snot, which is sometimes absent. In the late stage, there is more bleeding and there may be nosebleed.
4.Tongue extension and deviation: nasopharyngeal cancer directly invades or lymph nodes metastasize to the posterior region of the caudate or sublingual nerve canal. The invasion of sublingual nerve causes tongue extension deviation to the diseased side, accompanied by atrophy of tongue muscle on the diseased side.
5.Ear symptoms: If nasopharyngeal cancer occurs in the lateral wall of nasopharynx, lateral fossa or upper lip of the opening of eustachian tube, unilateral tinnitus or hearing loss may occur when the tumor compresses the eustachian tube. Unilateral tinnitus or hearing loss and a sense of occlusion in the ear are one of the early nasopharyngeal symptoms.
6. Diplopia and hypermetropia: it is related to abduction, motile eye and optic nerve damage.
7.Facial numbness: It refers to the numbness of facial skin, and the clinical examination shows that the sensation of pain and touch is reduced or disappeared. Tumor invading cavernous sinus often causes damage to branch 1 or branch 2 of trigeminal nerve. Facial skin numbness accounts for 10% to 27.9%.
8.Distant metastasis: the rate of distant metastasis of nasopharyngeal cancer ranges from 4.8% to 27%. Distant metastasis is one of the main reasons for nasopharyngeal treatment failure. The common metastatic sites are bone, lung, liver, etc. Simultaneous metastasis of multiple organs is common.
9. Neck mass: The rate of cervical lymph node metastasis in nasopharynx is as high as 60%-80%, and half of them are bilateral cervical lymph node metastasis.