To explore the correlation of quality of life with self-care efficacy and social support in patients with nasopharyngeal carcinoma after radiotherapy.
 Methods: A total of 179 patients with nasopharyngeal carcinoma at 3 months after radiotherapy were surveyed using self-designed general information questionnaire, European Organization for Research and Treatment of Cancer Quality of Life Questionnaire Core-30 (EORTC QLQ-C30 V3.0), Chinese-version of Strategies Used by People to Promote Health (C-SUPPH), and Perceived Social Support Scale (PSSS).
 Results: The score of cognitive function was the highest, while the score of social function was the lowest. The score of related symptoms was 22.21±10.24, the overall score for quality of life was 52.46±17.96, the score of self-care efficacy was 62.14±14.50, and the score of social support was 56.03±7.63. Self-care efficacy of patients with nasopharyngeal cancer after radiotherapy was positively correlated with 5 functional areas of quality of life and overall quality of life, and negatively correlated with relevant symptoms (P<0.01). Social support was positively correlated with physical function, social function and overall quality of life (P<0.01), and negatively correlated with relevant symptoms (P<0.05). Multiple regression analysis showed that self-care efficacy could predict 5 functional areas of life quality, relevant symptoms, overall quality of life and social support predicted social function in quality of life.
 Conclusion: Self-care efficacy and social support for patients with nasopharyngeal cancer after radiotherapy can affect their quality of life. Nursing staff should pay attention to improving the self-care efficacy of patients, guide them to actively seek or obtain social support, and in turn to improve their quality of life.
Humans ; Nasopharyngeal Carcinoma ; radiotherapy ; Nasopharyngeal Neoplasms ; radiotherapy ; Quality of Life ; Self Care ; Social Support

To investigate the γ pass rate limit of plan verification equipment for volumetric modulated arc therapy (VMAT) plan verification and its sensitivity on the opening and closing errors of multi-leaf collimator (MLC), 50 cases of nasopharyngeal carcinoma VMAT plan with clockwise and counterclockwise full arcs were randomly selected. Eight kinds of MLC opening and closing errors were introduced in 10 cases of them, and 80 plans with errors were generated. Firstly, the plan verification was conducted in the form of field-by-field measurement and true composite measurement. The γ analysis with the criteria of 3% dose difference, distance to agreement of 2 mm, 10% dose threshold, and absolute dose global normalized conditions were performed for these fields. Then gradient analysis was used to investigate the sensitivity of field-by-field measurement and true composite measurement on MLC opening and closing errors, and the receiver operating characteristic curve (ROC) was used to investigate the optimal threshold of γ pass rate for identifying errors. Tolerance limits and action limits for γ pass rates were calculated using statistical process control (SPC) method for another 40 cases. The error identification ability using the tolerance limit calculated by SPC method and the universal tolerance limit (95%) were compared with using the optimal threshold of ROC. The results show that for the true composite measurement, the clockwise arc and the counterclockwise arc, the descent gradients of the γ passing rate with per millimeter MLC opening error are 10.61%, 7.62% and 6.66%, respectively, and the descent gradients with per millimeter MLC closing error are 9.75%, 7.36% and 6.37%, respectively. The optimal thresholds obtained by the ROC method are 99.35%, 97.95% and 98.25%, respectively, and the tolerance limits obtained by the SPC method are 98.98%, 97.74% and 98.62%, respectively. The tolerance limit calculated by SPC method is close to the optimal threshold of ROC, both of which could identify all errors of ±2 mm, while the universal tolerance limit can only partially identify them, indicating that the universal tolerance limit is not sensitive on some large errors. Therefore, considering the factors such as ease of use and accuracy, it is suggested to use the true composite measurement in clinical practice, and to formulate tolerance limits and action limits suitable for the actual process of the institution based on the SPC method. In conclusion, it is expected that the results of this study can provide some references for institutions to optimize the radiotherapy plan verification process, set appropriate pass rate limit, and promote the standardization of plan verification.
Humans ; Radiotherapy, Intensity-Modulated ; Immune Tolerance ; Nasopharyngeal Carcinoma ; ROC Curve ; Nasopharyngeal Neoplasms/radiotherapy*

OBJECTIVE: To investigate the clinical application value of cone-beam CT (CBCT) online correcting technology in volume modulated radiation therapy (VMRT) for nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC). METHOD: Fifty NPC patients applying head neck and shoulder thermoplastic body membrane fixing device were eligible for treatment VMRT, these patients would accept a couple of CBCT scanning by on board imager (OBI) in a fixed time each week after initial setup and after online correcting during the first three week for radiotherapy, CBCT images and DRR images constructed by CT simulation were carried out registration,which could calculate the setup errors of initial setup and after online correcting. RESULT: Fifty patients were accepted 150 scanning after initial setup and 150 scanning after online correcting respectively, the errors after initial setup were (-1.24 ± 1.25)mm in X direction, (1.19 ± 1.85)mm in Y direction, (1.49 ± 1.70) mm in Z direction. The setup errors after online correcting were (-0.13 ± 0.29)mm in X direction, (0.10 ± 0.47)mm in Y direction, (0.17 ± 0.36)mm in Z direction. The setup errors after online correcting were significantly lower than the errors after initial setup in X direction (P < 0.05), Y direction (P < 0.05), Z direction(P < 0.05). The M(PTV) value after online correcting were 0.46 mm, 0.53 mm and 0.59 mm in X, Y and Z directions respectively. CONCLUSION The use of CBCT online correcting technology can significantly reduce the setup errors of VMRT for NPC and improve the treatment effect.
Carcinoma ; Cone-Beam Computed Tomography ; Humans ; Nasopharyngeal Carcinoma ; Nasopharyngeal Neoplasms ; radiotherapy ; Radiotherapy Planning, Computer-Assisted ; Radiotherapy, Intensity-Modulated

Nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) is one of the most common malignant tumor in China, Southeast Asia and North Africa region. The main treatment of NPC is radiation therapy, and concurrent chemoradiotherapy has become the standard treatment for locally advanced NPC Up to date, the targeted therapy in NPC has been gradually appreciated recently, in this paper, NPC biological targeted therapy in recent years as a progress of treatment were reviewed.
Biological Therapy ; Carcinoma ; Chemoradiotherapy ; China ; Humans ; Nasopharyngeal Carcinoma ; Nasopharyngeal Neoplasms ; therapy ; Radiotherapy

Carcinoma ; Combined Modality Therapy ; Humans ; Nasopharyngeal Neoplasms ; radiotherapy ; therapy

Radiotherapy is the main way to treat the Nasopharyngeal Carcinoma. But there are a lot of serious complications, the most common one of then is radioactive xerostomia. It seriously affect the patients's quality of life, even make patients change or stop their radiotherapy. It is extremely important to prevent and treat xerostomia caused by radiotherapy.
Carcinoma ; Humans ; Nasopharyngeal Carcinoma ; Nasopharyngeal Neoplasms ; complications ; radiotherapy ; Quality of Life ; Radiotherapy ; adverse effects ; Xerostomia ; etiology ; prevention & control

To compare the performance of ArcCheck and film verification for volumetric intensity modulated arc therapy (VMAT) in the treatment of nasopharyngeal carcinoma, and to study the feasibility of ArcCheck in VMAT dosimetric verification. Five patients of nasopharyngeal carcinoma treated with VMAT were enrolled in this study. Dose verification was carried out by ArcCheck and film respectively. The result showed that there were no significant differences between ArcCheck and film verification. ArcCheck software can obtain three dimensional dose distribution directly with simple operation. It is convenient for ArcCheck to be used for VMAT dosimetric verification.
Carcinoma ; Humans ; Nasopharyngeal Neoplasms ; radiotherapy ; Radiotherapy Dosage ; Radiotherapy Planning, Computer-Assisted ; methods ; Software

Nasopharyngeal cancer is a low differentiated squamous cell carcinoma, and the radiation therapy is the primary choice. It's 5 year survival rate may reach 64.4%, while 10.0% cases may suffer from the local recurrence. The salvage radiation or surgery is still the main choice for recurrent cases now. However the recurrent tumor become radiation insensitive and meanwhile, morbidity and mortality become higher. The experience of open salvage surgery on the recurrent radiation insensitive tumor had been proved safely, and the related morbidity and mortality are acceptable. Recently, the endoscopic salvage surgery has been developed, some preliminary experience has been obtained and the result looks promising. In this article, the pathobiological characteristics of the postradiation local recurrent nasopharyngeal cancer, the anatomy of nasopharyngus and related skull base area, especially the petroclival region and current situation of endonasal endoscopic salvage surgery were reviewed here. Basic principle of oncological surgery that endoscopic surgery should followed and possible endoscopic surgical approaches were proposed.
Carcinoma ; Carcinoma, Squamous Cell ; radiotherapy ; surgery ; Endoscopy ; Humans ; Nasopharyngeal Carcinoma ; Nasopharyngeal Neoplasms ; radiotherapy ; surgery ; Neoplasm Recurrence, Local ; radiotherapy ; surgery ; Radiation Tolerance ; Salvage Therapy ; methods ; Skull Base ; Survival Rate

OBJECTIVE: To investigate the accuracy of automatic segmentation of organs at risk (OARs) in radiotherapy for nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC). METHODS: The CT image data of 147 NPC patients with manual segmentation of the OARs were randomized into the training set (115 cases), validation set (12 cases), and the test set (20 cases). An improved network based on three-dimensional (3D) Unet was established (named as AUnet) and its efficiency was improved through end-to-end training. Organ size was introduced as a priori knowledge to improve the performance of the model in convolution kernel size design, which enabled the network to better extract the features of different organs of different sizes. The adaptive histogram equalization algorithm was used to preprocess the input CT images to facilitate contour recognition. The similarity evaluation indexes, including Dice Similarity Coefficient (DSC) and Hausdorff Distance (HD), were calculated to verify the validity of segmentation. RESULTS: DSC and HD of the test dataset were 0.86±0.02 and 4.0±2.0 mm, respectively. No significant difference was found between the results of AUnet and manual segmentation of the OARs ( CONCLUSIONS AUnet, an improved deep learning neural network, is capable of automatic segmentation of the OARs in radiotherapy for NPC based on CT images, and for most organs, the results are comparable to those of manual segmentation.
Databases, Factual ; Humans ; Image Processing, Computer-Assisted ; Nasopharyngeal Carcinoma/radiotherapy* ; Nasopharyngeal Neoplasms/radiotherapy* ; Organs at Risk ; Tomography, X-Ray Computed

Intensity-modulated radiotherapy planning for nasopharyngeal carcinoma is very complex. The quality of plan is often closely linked to the experience of the treatment planner. In this study, 10 nasopharyngeal carcinoma patients at different stages were enrolled. Based on the scripting of Pinnacle 9. 2 treatment planning system, the computer program was used to set the basic parameters and objective parameters of the plans. At last, the nasopharyngeal carcinoma intensity-modulated radiotherapy plans were completed automatically. Then, the automatical and manual intensity-modulated radiotherapy plans were statistically compared and clinically evaluated. The results showed that there were no significant differences between those two kinds of plans with respect to the dosimetry parameters of most targets and organs at risk. The automatical nasopharyngeal carcinoma intensity-modulated radiotherapy plans can meet the requirements of clinical radiotherapy, significantly reduce planning time, and avoid the influence of human factors such as lack of experience to the quality of plan.
Carcinoma ; Feasibility Studies ; Humans ; Nasopharyngeal Neoplasms ; radiotherapy ; Radiometry ; Radiotherapy Dosage ; Radiotherapy Planning, Computer-Assisted ; Radiotherapy, Intensity-Modulated