Open AccessClinical Characteristics and Prognosis of Small Cell Carcinoma in the Nasopharynx: A Population-Based Study
Author(s) -
Yumin Zhou,
Yingpeng Peng,
Qiaodan Liu,
Xianzhen Chen,
Jianzhong He,
Wei Wei,
Guihua Zhong,
Yaqin Zhang,
Ye Liu,
Jia-Ying Pan,
Shaoyan Feng,
Zhigang Liu
Publication year - 2022
Publication title -
cancer control
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.794
H-Index - 72
eISSN - 1526-2359
pISSN - 1073-2748
DOI - 10.1177/10732748221087075
Subject(s) - medicine , nasopharyngeal carcinoma , radiation therapy , chemoradiotherapy , oncology , univariate analysis , multivariate analysis , retrospective cohort study , population , environmental health
Background Nasopharyngeal small cell carcinoma (SmCC) is a rare histological type of nasopharyngeal cancer, and its prognosis remains poor. This study aimed to determine the clinical characteristics and survival prognostic factors of nasopharyngeal SmCC.Methods Detailed clinicopathologic and therapeutic characteristics of a patient diagnosed with nasopharyngeal SmCC were determined. Nasopharyngeal SmCC cases reported previously were reviewed and summarized. Furthermore, a retrospective analysis was performed on data from the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) Program database. Kaplan–Meier analysis was conducted to compare survival within groups. Univariate and multivariate analyses were performed to investigate prognostic factors.Results A nasopharyngeal SmCC patient treated with chemoradiotherapy who achieved 46 months long-term survival was reported. In reviewing 16 reported cases with epidemiologic and therapeutic details, we found most of nasopharyngeal SmCC patients were diagnosed with advanced grades and received chemoradiotherapy. In total, 13,993 cases of nasopharyngeal cancer were extracted from the SEER database, from which 57 nasopharyngeal SmCC cases were eventually screened out. The mean age of the patients was 55.70 years, and 64.9% of these cases were either grade III or IV; the median overall survival (OS) was 18 months. Statistically significant differences were observed in the OS values of groups categorized by age (P = .025) or radiotherapy (P = .037). Age (<70 years) and radiotherapy were identified as independent survival and prognostic factors.Conclusion Patients with nasopharyngeal SmCC are usually diagnosed with advanced grades and have poor prognoses; nevertheless, they can benefit from radiotherapy with prolonged overall survival.