The relationship between nasopharyngeal carcinoma tumor volume and TNM T-classification : a quantitative analysis

• Published in: European archives of oto-rhino-laryngology Vol. 264; no. 2; pp. 169 - 174
• Main Authors: ZHOU, Jia-Yin, CHONG, Vincent F. H, KHOO, James B. K, CHAN, Kap-Luk, JING HUANG
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Berlin Springer 01-02-2007
• Subjects: Adolescent; Adult; Aged; Biological and medical sciences; Child; Female; Humans; Magnetic Resonance Imaging; Male; Medical sciences; Middle Aged; Nasopharyngeal Neoplasms - classification; Nasopharyngeal Neoplasms - pathology; Nasopharyngeal Neoplasms - radiotherapy; Neoplasm Staging; Otorhinolaryngology. Stomatology; Prognosis; Retrospective Studies; Tumors; Upper respiratory tract, upper alimentary tract, paranasal sinuses, salivary glands: diseases, semeiology; Nasopharyngeal carcinoma; Tumor volume; Prognosis; TNM classification; Volume; Classification; Prognostic factor; ENT disease; Pharynx disease; Malignant tumor; Nasopharynx carcinoma; Quantitative analysis
• ISSN: 0937-4477; 1434-4726
• DOI: 10.1007/s00405-006-0163-2

Recent findings show that tumor volume is a significant prognostic factor for the treatment of nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC). The inclusion of tumor volume as an additional prognostic factor in the UICC TNM classification system was suggested; however, how tumor volume could possibly be incorporated is still unexplored. In this paper, we report a quantitative analysis on the relationship between NPC tumor volume and T-classification, using the data from 206 NPC patients. By T-classification and semi-automatic tumor volume measurement, the difference in tumor volumes among the various TNM T-classification groups was examined. In addition, a statistics-based analysis scheme, which used the T-classification as the "gold standard", was proposed to classify NPC tumors into volume-based groups to explore the possible links. The results show that NPC tumor volume has positive correlation with advancing T-classification groups and significant difference existed in the distribution of T-classification among various volume-based groups (P < 0.001). By the proposed statistical scheme, tumor volume could be included as an additional prognostic factor in the TNM framework, following validation studies.