jp

My mother was diagnosed with nasopharyngeal carcinoma in March 1998. At that
time she had surgery to remove some lymph nodes and did 3 months of external
beam radiation treatment.

The NPC recurred in Feb. 2000 and she did 5 days of brachytherapy. In April
2003, she was diagnosed again with recurring NPC. This time, she did 6
cycles of chemotherapy (cisplatin and epirubicin). Her MRI has shown some
necrosis of the tumor but it has not disappeared. The NPC is less than 5mm
and is localized with no metastasis.

We are considering targeted radio-surgery treatment with the CyberKnife in
order to kill this tumor, and I would appreciate any feedback regarding this
type of treatment and success rates.

Thanking you in advance,
jp

steph

The demonstrable tumour may be less than 5mm, but that is unlikely to be the
true situation biologically.
The number of people with an equivalent multiple treatment history to your
mother is miniscule, so there are no statistically significant large series
on which to base prognosis.

The advantage of approaches like the cyberknife is that it enables a very
small, very well defined volume to be treated, so avoids high risks of nasty
treatment side-effects. But the likelihood of it effecting a cure is very
small.