Abstract. There is currently no consensus on salvage therapy for recurrent esophageal cancer. Salvage surgery is a well-established option for attaining long-term survival; however, it is associated with a high risk of perioperative morbidity and mortality. A total of 6 patients who underwent re-irradiation for recurrence of locoregional esophageal cancer following definitive chemoradiotherapy were investigated. The median interval between initial radiotherapy and re-irradiation was 17.4 months (range, 6.4-59.2 months). Re-irradiation salvage therapy was mostly administered with concurrent chemotherapy, which consisted of several cycles of nedaplatin on day 1 and oral S-1 administration on days 1-14. The median survival after re-irradiation was 13.6 months (range, 1.9-33.3 months). A total of 3 patients who completed hyperfractionated radiation therapy survived for >1 year. One patient has had no signs of recurrence or late radiation toxicity for >2 years. Severe acute hematological adverse events (AEs) occurred in 3 patients, including 1 case of grade 4 leukopenia. One severe late AE occurred in 1 patient, who developed grade 3 dysphagia and became permanently dependent on percutaneous endoscopic gastrostomy tube feeding. Salvage radiotherapy is considered to be a good treatment option for inoperable locoregional recurrent esophageal cancer. The results of the present study demonstrated that re-irradiation, with or without chemotherapy, for recurrent esophageal carcinoma after definitive chemoradiotherapy was tolerable and yielded reasonably satisfactory results.

The purpose of this study was to investigate an association between the prognosis for oro-hypopharynx squamous cell carcinoma treated with radiation therapy and the pre-therapeutic level of C-reactive protein (CRP). Patient with oro-hypopharyngeal squamous cell carcinoma who underwent definitive radiotherapy in our institution from January 2002 to August 2016 were enrolled. The patient were divided into elevated CRP (over 0.3 mg/dl) group and normal CRP groups, according to pre-treatment serum levels. There were 276 evaluable patients, and the median follow up was 41 months, ranging from 2 to 171 months. The 3-year OS and CSS for all enrolled patients were 67.0% and 72.8%, respectively. The OS and CSS rates were significantly worse in the elevated CRP group than in the normal CRP group, according to Kaplan-Meier survival curves analysed by a Log-rank test (p = 0.005 and p < 0.001, respectively). Multivariate analyses indicated that serum CRP levels remained independent predictors for both OS (HR: 1.588, p = 0.022) and CSS (HR: 1.989, p = 0.005). The pre-treatment CRP level is an independent predictor of treatment prognosis in patients with oro-hypopharyngeal cancer who underwent definitive radiotherapy. Especially, it is curious that an elevated CRP serum level is a significant predictor of loco-regional recurrence.

We sought to evaluate clinical outcomes and toxicities of radiation therapy (RT) alone compared to RT with concurrent chemotherapy (CCT) for nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) treatment.We conducted a retrospective review of consecutive patients with biopsy-proven nonmetastatic NPC who underwent RT at our institution. From May 2001 to April 2015; 62 newly diagnosed NPC patients were treated with three-dimensional conformal radiotherapy (3D-CRT) or intensity-modulated radiotherapy (IMRT) with or without CCT. The patients were classified as follows: 8% stage I, 15% stage II, 32% stage III, and 45% stage IVA/IVB. A total of 76% of tumors were World Health Organization types II or III. Acute and late toxicities were graded according to the Common Terminology Criteria for Adverse Events version 3.0. Overall survival (OS), progression-free survival (PFS), locoregional progression-free survival (LRPFS), and distant metastasis-free survival (DMFS) were analyzed.The median follow-up period for living patients was 53 months. The median actual delivered dose was 70 Gy with a range of 28 to 70 Gy in fraction sizes of 2 Gy. The estimated 5-year OS, PFS, LRPFS, and DMFS rates were 72.7%, 59.8%, 77.9%, and 84.2%, respectively. The use of CCT was a predictive factor of significantly better OS and PFS, whereas stage IV was a significant predictor of poor OS and PFS. The most severe acute toxicities included Grade 3 mucositis in 56% and Grade 3 dermatitis in 8%. Subset analysis revealed that Grade 2 xerostomia was significantly lower in the IMRT (23%) group than in the 3D-CRT (52%) group (P = .02).RT yielded favorable outcomes. CCT was associated with longer PFS and OS than RT alone.

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