Trial Information

Whole-Body 18F-FDG PET in Evaluating Induction Chemotherapeutic Response for Locally Advanced Nasopharyngeal Cancer Patients and Correlating With Histopathology: a Prospective Study

In order to improve locoregional control and to eradicate micrometastases for patients with
locally advanced nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC), induction chemotherapy followed by
concurrent chemoradiotherapy has been the preferred therapeutic approach.Although it would
be of great advantage to identify non-responder during or immediately after therapy to
formulate an alternative treatment strategy, non-invasive methods for early evaluation of
therapeutic response for advanced NPC patients have not been fully evaluated. Decrease of
tumor volume in anatomical images and relief of symptoms in clinical follow-up have been
used in many conventional approaches to evaluate the effectiveness of therapy. However, an
effective therapy could very well have resulted in early subclinical alterations in tumor
physiology and biochemistry. These alterations may have occurred long before changes in the
tumor mass become apparent. Thus therapeutic effect may not be assessed accurately using the
conventional anatomical imaging studies, such as CT and MRI.Recent studies have shown that
18F-FDG PET, a whole-body imaging technology based on glucose metabolism, can effectively
detect subclinical and clinical therapeutic responses at stages that are earlier than those
detected by conventional approaches.We therefore propose to conduct a prospective study to
evaluate therapeutic response using 18F-FDG PET before and after induction chemotherapy for
locally advanced NPC patients.