| Background&Objective: Nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) is one of the mostcommon malignant tumor in China. Due to its special anatomical sites and sensitive toradiation, radiotherapy has become its main method of treatment. In nasopharyngealcarcinoma cases,20%to30%of them are cervical lymph node-negative patients, namelyN0patients with nasopharyngeal carcinoma. For this part of the patients’ neckprophylactic radiotherapy, clinical line has been reached on only half neck prophylacticirradiation consensus. Analysis previous studies about N0NPC patients treated withhalf or full neck radiotherapy, and compare its efficacy to supply the evidence for theappropriate selection of neck irradiation volume for neck lymph node-negativenasopharyngeal carcinoma patients.Methods: The related references published from Jan1990to Jun2013were searchedin Pubmed, Embase, Cochrane and Wangfang Databases. The qualified references forenrollment criteria were screened and the relative data were collected. The OR (Odds ratio)value by fixed effect model was used to evaluate the data for patients receivedradiotherapy between the upper neck and whole neck irradiation. The endpoints including5-year neck local control rate (LCR), neck-in-irradiation LCR, andneck-outsides-irradiation LCR.Results: Five qualified references were screened and belonged to respective research.There enrolled1333patients, including970patients received the upper neck irradiationand363patients received the whole neck irradiation, respectively. The forest plotsrevealed that there were no significant differences for5-year neck LCR, neck-in-irradiation LCR, and neck-outsides-irradiation LCR for patients receivedradiotherapy between the upper neck and whole neck irradiation. These OR values were0.89(95%CI:0.41-1.94),1.29(95%CI:0.58-2.88) and0.42(95%CI:0.07-2.36),respectively. Conclusions The meta-analysis results suggest that irradiation to the upperneck for neck lymph node-negative nasopharyngeal carcinoma was appropriate. |
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