PURPOSE The aim of this joint guideline is to provide evidence-based recommendations to practicing physicians and other healthcare providers on definitive-intent chemoradiotherapy for patients with stage II-IVA nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC). METHODS The Chinese Society of Clinical Oncology (CSCO) and ASCO convened an expert panel of radiation oncology, medical oncology, surgery, and advocacy representatives. The literature search included systematic reviews, meta-analyses, and randomized controlled trials published from 1990 through 2020. Outcomes of interest included survival, distant and locoregional disease control, and quality of life. Expert panel members used this evidence and informal consensus to develop evidence-based guideline recommendations. RESULTS The literature search identified 108 relevant studies to inform the evidence base for this guideline. Five overarching clinical questions were addressed, which included subquestions on radiotherapy (RT), chemotherapy sequence, and concurrent, induction, and adjuvant chemotherapy options. RECOMMENDATIONS Evidence-based recommendations were developed to address aspects of care related to chemotherapy in combination with RT for the definitive-intent treatment of stage II to IVA NPC. Additional information is available at www.asco.org/head-neck-cancer-guidelines .

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Purpose: To develop a method for predicting optimal dose distributions, given the planning image and segmented anatomy, by applying deep learning techniques to a database of previously optimized and approved Intensity-modulated radiation therapy treatment plans. Methods: Eighty cases of early-stage nasopharyngeal cancer (NPC) were included in the study. Seventy cases were chosen randomly as the training set and the remaining as the test set. The inputs were the images with structures, with each target and organs at risk (OARs) assigned a unique label. The outputs were dose maps, including coarse dose maps and converted fine dose maps (FDM) from convolution. Two types of input images with structures were used in the model building. One type of input included the images (with associated structures) without manipulation. The second type of input involved modifying the image gray label with information from radiation beam geometry. ResNet101 was chosen as the deep learning network for both. The accuracy of predicted dose distributions was evaluated against the corresponding dose as used in the clinic. A global three-dimensional gamma analysis was calculated for the evaluation.Results: The proposed model trained with the two different sets of input images and structures could both predict patient-specific dose distributions accurately. For the out-of-field dose distributions, the model obtained from the input with radiation geometry performed better (dose difference in %, 4.7 AE 6.1% vs 5.5 AE 7.9%, P < 0.05). The mean Gamma pass rates of dose distributions predicted with both types of input were comparable for most OARs (P > 0.05), except for the bilateral optic nerves and the optic chiasm. Conclusions: The proposed system with radiation geometry added to the input is a promising method to generate patient-specific dose distributions for radiotherapy. It can be applied to obtain the dose distributions slice-by-slice for planning quality assurance and for guiding automated planning.

BackgroundRadiotherapy is one of the main treatment methods for nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC). It requires exact delineation of the nasopharynx gross tumor volume (GTVnx), the metastatic lymph node gross tumor volume (GTVnd), the clinical target volume (CTV), and organs at risk in the planning computed tomography images. However, this task is time-consuming and operator dependent. In the present study, we developed an end-to-end deep deconvolutional neural network (DDNN) for segmentation of these targets.MethodsThe proposed DDNN is an end-to-end architecture enabling fast training and testing. It consists of two important components: an encoder network and a decoder network. The encoder network was used to extract the visual features of a medical image and the decoder network was used to recover the original resolution by deploying deconvolution. A total of 230 patients diagnosed with NPC stage I or stage II were included in this study. Data from 184 patients were chosen randomly as a training set to adjust the parameters of DDNN, and the remaining 46 patients were the test set to assess the performance of the model. The Dice similarity coefficient (DSC) was used to quantify the segmentation results of the GTVnx, GTVnd, and CTV. In addition, the performance of DDNN was compared with the VGG-16 model.ResultsThe proposed DDNN method outperformed the VGG-16 in all the segmentation. The mean DSC values of DDNN were 80.9% for GTVnx, 62.3% for the GTVnd, and 82.6% for CTV, whereas VGG-16 obtained 72.3, 33.7, and 73.7% for the DSC values, respectively.ConclusionDDNN can be used to segment the GTVnx and CTV accurately. The accuracy for the GTVnd segmentation was relatively low due to the considerable differences in its shape, volume, and location among patients. The accuracy is expected to increase with more training data and combination of MR images. In conclusion, DDNN has the potential to improve the consistency of contouring and streamline radiotherapy workflows, but careful human review and a considerable amount of editing will be required.

Nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) is a malignant epithelial tumor originating in the nasopharynx and has a high incidence in Southeast Asia and North Africa. To develop these comprehensive guidelines for the diagnosis and management of NPC, the Chinese Society of Clinical Oncology (CSCO) arranged a multi-disciplinary team comprising of experts from all sub-specialties of NPC to write, discuss, and revise the guidelines. Based on the findings of evidencebased medicine in China and abroad, domestic experts have iteratively developed these guidelines to provide proper management of NPC. Overall, the guidelines describe the screening, clinical and pathological diagnosis, staging and risk assessment, therapies, and follow-up of NPC, which aim to improve the management of NPC.

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ObjectiveTo compare the treatment outcomes of intensity-modulated radiotherapy with simultaneous integrated boost (IMRT-SIB) alone to concurrent chemoradiotherapy (CCRT) for locoregionally advanced nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC).MethodsFrom November 2001 to December 2009, 333 patients with pathologically diagnosed, locoregionally advanced NPC were treated by IMRT-SIB with or without weekly cisplatin concurrent chemotherapy at our institute. Among them, 62 patients received neo- or adjuvant chemotherapy or molecular target drugs were excluded from this analysis. There were 129 patients received IMRT-SIB alone, and 142 patients received IMRT-SIB with weekly cisplatin 30 mg/m2 for 7 weeks. The radiotherapy protocol was identical for each group.ResultsThere were no significant differences in survival between CCRT and IMRT-SIB group in terms of gender, T/N classifications and concurrent chemoradiotherapy. The 5-year local control (LC), overall survival (OS), disease-free survival (DFS) and distant metastasis-free survival (DMFS) for the entire group were 87.0%, 79.4%, 69.7 and 83.3%, respectively. The LC, OS, DFS and DMFS for CCRT and IMRT-SIB alone groups were 80.6% vs. 90.8% (P = 0.10), 71.7% vs. 83.2% (P = 0.201), 63.9% vs. 74.6% (P = 0.07), and 79.6% vs. 86.0% (P = 0.27), respectively.ConclusionCompared to CCRT, IMRT-SIB alone had demonstrated similar disease LC, OS, DFS and DMFS in locoregionally advanced NPC. Careful radiation target volume design and simultaneous integrated boost may play a role that overrides the benefit from concurrent chemotherapy. Further investigation with randomized study is necessary to determine whether IMRT-SIB alone can achieve similar outcomes of concurrent chemoradiotherapy.

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