Surgery for Recurrent Nasopharyngeal Carcinoma

Nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) refers to a malignancy arising from the epithelium of the nasopharynx with a high incidence in southern China and Southeast Asia (Chen et al. 2019). It is significantly different from other head and neck cancers in terms of epidemiology, etiology, treatment, and prognosis. Global tumor statistics reported 133,354 new cases of NPC and 80,008 deaths in 2020 (Sung et al. 2021). Currently, intensity-modulated radiation therapy (IMRT) with or without adjuvant chemotherapy is the main treatment for primary NPC (Wong et al. 2021), with 5-year overall survival rates ranging from 74% to 89% (Du et al. 2019; Zhang et al. 2019).