Abstract
Objective: To determine the treatment efficacy of systemic chemotherapy combined with sequential CT-guided radiofrequency ablation (chemo-RFA) in the management of nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) with liver metastasis. Methods: A total of 427 NPC patients diagnosed with liver metastasis at Sun Yat-sen University Cancer Center between January 2000 and December 2013 were enrolled. Of the patients, 340 cases were male, 87 cases were female, the median age was 45 years (range 18-80 years), all patients received systemic chemotherapy and part of them also received RFA treatment. Patients were evaluated for response every two cycles during systemic chemotherapy and then every three months until death. One-to-one matched pairs between chemo-RFA group with chemo-only group were generated using propensity score matching; survival analysis was further conducted. Results: Of all the enrolled patients, 56 patients (13.1%) received combined treatment, 371 patients (86.9%)received chemotherapy alone. After propensity score matching, 56 pairs of well-matched liver metastatic NPC patients were selected from different treatment groups. The 1-, 3-, 5- year overall survival (OS) rates for chemo-RFA group were 89.2%, 45.5% and 32.5% and chemo-only group were 77.1%, 27.5% and 4.8% respectively; the 1-, 3-, 5- year progression-free survival (PFS) rates for chemo-RFA group were 64.0%, 25.4% and 10.7% and chemo-only group were 44.1%, 5.5% and 5.5% respectively.The adjusted hazard ratio in OS and PFS of the choice for chemo-RFA approach to chemo-only was HR 0.43, 95% CI 0.25-0.73 and HR 0.44, 95% CI 0.28-0.71 respectively. Conclusion: CT-guided RFA combined with chemotherapy approach could improve the survival rate for NPC patients with liver metastasis.
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