Radical radiotherapy for nasopharyngeal carcinoma in elderly patients: The importance of co-morbidity assessment

Summary Elderly patients represent a unique challenge for radical treatment in nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) because of age and co-morbid conditions. We sought to evaluate the outcome of this particular group of patients and to identify key factors affecting treatment outcome. From 1998 to 2008, 990 consecutive NPC patients without distant metastasis were treated with radical radiotherapy with planned total dose >66 Gy. Among them, 103 (10.4%) patients were elderly aged >70 (group A). Their clinical characteristics and outcome were compared with those aged p p p  = 0.002], and the most important prognostic factors for overall survival included age, presenting stage and ACE-27 ( p