Evaluation of 7th Edition of AJCC Staging System for Nasopharyngeal Carcinoma

To evaluate and improve the 7 edition International Union against Cancer/American Joint Committee on Cancer staging system for nasopharyngeal carcinoma. A retrospective review of the data from 905 patients with biopsy-proven non-disseminated nasopharyngeal carcinoma was performed. All the patients were examined by magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and received radiotherapy. Satisfied distributions among the stages were observed in the 7 edition staging systems. LRFS only differed in classifications betweenT1 and T3, T1 and T4 (P=0.022 and P=0.016, respectively). Significant differences were observed between patients without and with masticator space involvement for OS, DMFS and PFS (p