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Salvage surgery for nasopharyngeal carcinoma resulted in good QOL
Chan YW. Cancer. 2011;doi:10.1022/cncr.26719.
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Quality of life after salvage surgery for nasopharyngeal carcinoma was good, according to a small study conducted in China. However, patients should be followed to ensure that surgical complications such as trismus, palatal fistula and osteoradionecrosis are avoided.
To determine quality of life after salvage nasopharyngectomy, researchers used a self-reported, health-related quality-of-life questionnaire given to 185 patients who underwent the procedure at a single surgical center between 2003 and 2011. Nasopharyngectomy was performed in all patients using the maxillary swing approach.
After surgery, questionnaire scores indicated that those patients who had undergone both surgery and chemoradiotherapy had significantly lower mean global health system scores compared with those who underwent surgery alone.
Of the five quality-of-life areas examined by the questionnaire, social functioning had the lowest scores post surgery. Specifically, areas that significantly affect quality of life were social eating, mouth opening, and weight loss.
The researchers reported finding no significant differences between groups in the presence of severe trismus or in postoperative palatal fistula formation. However, the presence of osteoradionecrosis of the skull base was associated with more pain and resulted in significantly lower scores in the emotional and social functioning domains of the questionnaire.
Moving forward, as the use of transoral robotic surgery increases for patients with nasopharyngeal carcinoma increases, studies should examine the quality of life in patients who undergo this type of surgery vs. maxillary swing, the researchers wrote.
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