In daily outpatient clinics, we often encounter some patients with recurrent nasopharyngeal carcinoma, due to repeated radiotherapy, bilateral occlusal muscles and salivary glands have been fibrotic or atrophied, resulting in difficulty in opening mouth, severe dry mouth, eating and speaking disorders, some even have persistent secretory otitis media, repeated ear stuffiness, middle ear pus flow, and obvious hearing loss, which seriously affect their quality of life, and even some patients gradually form cachexia and gradually lose weight, and finally die from causes other than nasopharyngeal carcinoma itself, such as malnutrition. And when it comes to this extent, there is no special way to reverse it. Although the first treatment for nasopharyngeal carcinoma, a malignant tumor of the head and neck that is highly prevalent in our southern provinces, is mainly radiotherapy, it is not very sensitive to radiotherapy or chemotherapy again for those cases that remain after radiotherapy or recur after radiotherapy for tumor control. The quality of life after surgery is much higher than that after repeated radiotherapy, and the survival time is also better than that after repeated radiotherapy.
Minimally invasive nasal endoscopic surgery for recurrent or residual nasopharyngeal cancer is a salvage surgery for those patients who do not have metastasis in the neck and other parts of the body. For example, minimally invasive nasal endoscopic surgery is to use the natural channels of human nasal cavity to reach the nasopharynx under the guidance of special endoscopic surgical equipment to remove recurrent or residual lesions in the nasopharynx and ensure sufficient safety boundaries, and postoperative preventive supplemented with small doses of radiotherapy, thus avoiding to the greatest extent the side effects of repeated radiotherapy on the head and neck, such as neck stiffness, occlusal muscle stiffness, difficulty in opening mouth to eat, salivary gland fibrosis, persistent dry mouth, and persistent secretory otitis media, and obviously improving the quality of life of patients.
Patients with nasopharyngeal carcinoma are recommended to insist on regular review after the first radiotherapy treatment, and for early recurrence or residual after radiotherapy, try to choose active treatment to achieve the purpose of treatment.