Background: To critically evaluate the use of endoscopic nasopharyngectomy in the treatment of recurrent nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) through a case series, systematic literature review, and pooled analysis.
Methods: A case series of 18 patients combined with systematic literature review and pooled analysis of PubMed, Web of Science, and Scopus search, identifying 576 papers. After excluding 307 papers as search engine duplicates, only 16 of the remaining papers had adequate patient data to be included.
Results: Our case series of 18 patients had a 2-year disease-free survival (DFS) and overall survival (OS) of 90.0% and 100%, respectively. The pooled analysis of 300 patients that had an endoscopic resection of recurrent NPC showed recurrence-free survival and overall survival were 85.8% and 82.9%, respectively. Most, 56.1%, were recurrent T1 lesions. Resection margins were negative in 90.2% of patients. Local recurrence occurred in 20.1% of patients. Major complications occurred in 13.6% of patients. The mean hospital stay was 5.8 days, the mean operating time was 228.3 minutes, and the mean operative blood loss was 163 mL.
Conclusion: Endoscopic resection of recurrent NPC occurs with low surgical morbidity. However, further long-term evaluation with longer follow-up data is needed to evaluate if the survival data is comparable or better than open approaches.
Keywords: endoscopic nasopharyngectomy; minimally invasive; nasopharyngeal carcinoma; outcomes; recurrent nasopharyngeal carcinoma.
© 2016 ARS-AAOA, LLC.