The aim of this study was to retrospectively compare the treatment efficacy of systemic chemotherapy combined with sequential CT-guided radiofrequency ablation (Chemo-RFA) to chemotherapy alone (Chemo-only) in the management of nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) with liver metastasis. Between 2003 and 2011, 328 NPC patients diagnosed with liver metastasis at Sun Yat-sen University Cancer Center were enrolled. One-to-one matched pairs between Chemo-RFA group with the Chemo-only group were generated using propensity score matching. The associations of treatment modality with overall survival (OS) and progression-free survival (PFS) were determined by Cox regression. Of the patients enrolled, 37 patients (11.8 %) received combined treatment, 291 (82.2) received chemotherapy alone. The patients in Chemo-RFA group were more frequently classified as lower number (≤3) of liver metastatic lesions (P<0.001), had lower rates of bi-lobar liver metastasis (P<0.001) and extra-hepatic metastasis (P<0.001) than patients in Chemo-only group. After propensity score matching, 37 pairs of well-matched liver metastatic NPC patients were selected from different treatment groups. The adjusted hazard ratio in OS and PFS of the choice for Chemo-RFA approach to Chemo-only was 0.53 (95%CI, 0.30-0.93) and 0.60 (95%CI, 0.36-0.97), respectively. In conclusion, combined CT-guided RFA and chemotherapy approach offer the chance of improved survival for NPC patients with oligometastasis in liver, and should be considered if the ablation is technically feasible.
Keywords: Nasopharyngeal carcinoma; liver metastasis; palliative chemotherapy; prognosis; radiofrequency ablation.