Postirradiation Morbidity in Patients with Nasopharyngeal Carcinoma

Abstract

Nasopharyngeal carcinoma has some unique features among the other head and neck malignancies because of different etiologic factors, diagnostic problems during presentation and high response rate to radiation therapy. Although radiation therapy is the major choice of therapy, it may cause some side effects, which influence the patients’ quality of life. We investigated the extent of these influences on 20 nasopharyngeal carcinoma cases, who were treated at Istanbul University, Cerrahpafla School of Medicine, Department of Radiation Oncology, between 1979 and 1997. Previous studies in the literature were focusing on nasal mucosal problems. Among the side effects reported, dry mouth was the most important one, while fluctuating hearing loss due to eustachian tube dysfunction, hypophyseal dysfunction, trismus and dental problems were other major side effects. Presenting their demographic features we also investigated these common side effects by evaluating severity of dry mouth, maximal mouth opening, tooth losses, amount of nasopharyngeal crusting, rhinomanometry and tympanometry findings.

Keywords

• nasopharyngeal carcinoma
• radiotherapy
• side effects.