Annals of Oncology 14:508-509, 2003
© 2003 European Society for Medical Oncology
Editorial |
Chemoradiation therapy in locally advanced nasopharyngeal cancer: which kind of cooperation?
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Although radiation therapy is effective in the management of patients with early stage nasopharyngeal cancer, a high rate of local-regional failure and distant dissemination is expected in patients with advanced disease. This has prompted studies on the addition of chemotherapy to radiation therapy. Chemotherapy has been used as a neoadjuvant and, less frequently, concomitantly with radiation therapy or as an adjuvant to it. In this issue of Annals of Oncology, Oh et al. [1] report a small series of patients prospectively treated with neoadjuvant chemotherapy, followed by chemoradiation therapy (CCRT). This study is of interest because there are only a few other studies reported so far employing both neoadjuvant chemotherapy and CCRT [2, 3].
It is widely believed that the