Improvement in quality of life in patients with nasopharyngeal carcinoma treated with non-invasive extracorporeal radiofrequency in combination with chemoradiotherapy

Abstract

Purpose: To improve the quality of life (QOL) of patients with nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) after chemoradiotherapy (CRT), it is necessary to find an effective method to reduce the toxic side-effects of CRT.

Materials and methods: Between June 2007 and June 2010, 83 previously untreated patients with NPC were randomized to receive CRT either with or without non-invasive extracorporeal radiofrequency (ERF). All the patients underwent radiation, and weekly chemotherapy of paclitaxel 135–175 mg/m² and cisplatin 60–90 mg/m². In addition, the patients in the treatment group also underwent non-invasive ERF on a radiofrequency machine at 13.56 MHz for 1 hour at 41–43°C. After the completion of treatment, evaluation was carried out to determine the survival rate, disease-free survival time, and QOL. QOL was analyzed by using the European Organization for Research and Treatment of Cancer Quality of Life Questionnaire-Core 30 (EORTC QLQ-C30) and the European Organization for Research and Treatment of Cancer Quality of Life Questionnaire Head and Neck Cancer Module (EORTC QLQ-H&N35) every 6 months during the three-year period.

Results: After completion of the treatments, the 36-month survival rate was 0.730 in the treatment group and 0.535 in the reference group (p = 0.041); the average disease-free survival time was 48 months in the treatment group and only 37.5 months in the reference group (p = 0.048). In the post- treatment questionnaires, several NPC-specific (pain, swallowing, speech, social eating, opening mouth, dry mouth, sticky saliva) QOL domains were better preserved with CRT + ERF compared to CRT at different time-points.

Conclusions: The combination treatment of ERF with CRT can prolong the survival rate and disease-free survival time and improve the QOL for patients with NPC.

Keywords::

• Nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC)
• non-invasive extracorporeal radiofrequency (ERF)
• quality of life (QOL)

Acknowledgements

This project was supported by the Doctoral Fund of the Ministry of Education 2010 (No. 20104401110003), Guangdong Natural Science Foundation (No. S2013010013434) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 81273616 and 30973693).

Declaration of interest

The authors report no conflicts of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of the paper.