AUTHOR=Ma Jia-Lin , Huang Shi-Ting , Jiang Yan-Ming , Pan Xin-Bin 

TITLE=Efficacy of Chemotherapy in Survival of Stage I Nasopharyngeal Carcinoma

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Oncology

VOLUME=11

YEAR=2021

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/oncology/articles/10.3389/fonc.2021.735817

DOI=10.3389/fonc.2021.735817

ISSN=2234-943X

ABSTRACT=<sec><title>Purpose</title><p>To identify whether chemoradiotherapy improves survival of stage I nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC).</p></sec><sec><title>Materials and Methods</title><p>NPC patients were extracted from the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results database between 2010 and 2015. Pathologically confirmed stage T1N0M0 (the 7<sup>th</sup> edition AJCC) were investigated. Overall survival (OS) and cancer-specific survival (CSS) were compared between the radiotherapy and chemoradiotherapy groups using the Kaplan-Meier method and propensity score matching (PSM) analyses.</p></sec><sec><title>Results</title><p>This study included 91 (40.27%) patients in the chemoradiotherapy group and 135 (59.73%) patients in the radiotherapy group. Before PSM, chemoradiotherapy was associated with worse 3-year OS (74.31 <italic>vs</italic> 87.23%; <italic>P</italic> = 0.025) and 5-year OS (64.28 <italic>vs</italic> 83.12%; <italic>P</italic> = 0.001) compared to those associated with radiotherapy. Similarly, chemoradiotherapy showed worse 3-year CSS (87.01 <italic>vs</italic> 96.97%; <italic>P</italic> = 0.028) and 5-year CSS (80.39 <italic>vs.</italic> 96.97%; <italic>P</italic> = 0.002) than those of radiotherapy. After PSM, chemoradiotherapy revealed worse 5-year OS (63.10 <italic>vs.</italic> 82.49%; <italic>P</italic> = 0.031) and CSS (80.95 <italic>vs.</italic> 93.70%; <italic>P</italic> = 0.016) than radiotherapy. The multivariate regression analysis revealed that chemoradiotherapy was an independent risk prognostic factor for OS and CSS before and after PSM.</p></sec><sec><title>Conclusion</title><p>Radiotherapy alone is recommended for stage I NPC patients.</p></sec>