Background: Nasopharyngeal cancer is endemic to Southeast Asia. However, there is limited clinical evidence of nasopharyngeal cancer in Indonesia, which has the largest population in Southeast Asia.
Methods: Patterns of care and treatment outcomes in 428 patients with newly-diagnosed and pathologically-confirmed nasopharyngeal cancer were retrospectively analyzed.
Results: Concurrent chemo-radiotherapy (CCRT) was the first-line treatment for stages I-IVB diseases. The 2-year overall survival (OS) of all patients were 100.0%, 100.0%, 93.8%, 86.2%, 82.9%, and 62.4% for stages I, II, III, IVA, IVB, and IVC, respectively. The 2-year OS of CCRT-treated patients were 100.0%, 100.0%, 92.6%, 82.4%, and 78.3% for stages I, II, III, IVA, and IVB, respectively.
Conclusion: The patterns of care and treatment outcomes were potentially consistent with world standards, needing future validation. This is the largest study of newly diagnosed nasopharyngeal cancer in Indonesia, a huge disease burden, providing an important basis for the clinical management of this disease.
Keywords: Indonesia; Nasopharyngeal carcinoma; Radiation therapy; Treatment outcome; patterns of care.