The end-of-treatment telephone response and prognosis of post-radiotherapy nasopharyngeal carcinoma patients in southern China.

Nasopharyngeal Carcinoma (NPC) patients' end-of-treatment survival status has drawn more attention in recent years. Telephone follow-up, as a most operative approach among all the clinical follow-ups, is an effective means to extend medical service to patients' home and is thus widely used in clinical practice. This study aimed to analyze the post-radiotherapy NPC patients' phone response rate and its factors, and to discuss the independent prognostic factors of NPC patients' radiotherapy. We prospectively designed a nurses-led telephone follow-up to include 2520 NPC patients who received simple radical radiotherapy between Jan. 2007 and Jun. 2012 at Sun Yat-sen University Cancer Center. The patients' response rate and its factors were calculated. Survival analysis was used to estimate the patients' survival and the influencing factors. The overall response rate was 90.5%; Patients with reserved contact type of mobile + landlinephone or landline phone had higher follow-up response rate than patients with mobile contact only; patients with 2 or more reserved contacts, and family cancer history had higher response rate than patients with only 1 number and those without family history. Patients' cumulative survival rate of 1, 3 and 5 years were 98.9%, 75.3%, 50.3%, respectively. T-staging, N-staging, higher clinical staging, with basicranial invasion were the influencing factors of the patients' poor prognosis. The telephone follow-up response was affected by reserved contact type, number of contacts and family medical history; T-staging, N-staging, higher clinical staging, with basicranial invasion were the influencing factors of the patients' poor prognosis. This study provides a scientific basis for increasing the NPC patients' end-of-treatment response and promoting the individualized clinical treatment.