摘要
Background: The purpose of this study was to compare the long-term survivals between altered fractionated and conventional fractionated radiotherapy with the same concurrent chemoradiotherapy (concurrent CRT) for patients with advanced nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC). Methods: We retrospectively reviewed 203 patients with NPC who received radiotherapy (RT) by either a conventional fractionated (70-74 Gy/35-37 fractions/7-8 weeks) or altered fractionated (72-75 Gy/45 fractions/6 weeks) schedule plus the same concurrent CRT. Results: The patient characteristics between conventional fractionated and altered fractionated groups showed similar distribution. The 5-year rates of nasopharyngeal failure-free, neck failure-free, and distant metastasis failure-free survival between conventional fractionated and altered fractionated groups were 88% versus 86% (P =.7781), 95% versus 93% (P =.4176), and 76% versus 73% (P =.4029), respectively. The overall survival (OS; 5-year rates were 64% versus 62%; P =.4812) and progression-free survival (PFS; 5-year rates were 67% versus 63%; P =.3829) rates also showed no significant differences. The acute and late toxicities were similar between both groups. Conclusion: Altered fractionated and conventional fractionated RT achieved similar survival outcome when concurrent CRT strategy was used for advanced NPC.