Background: Our aim was to grade MRI-detected skull-base invasion in nasopharyngeal carcinoma and evaluate the prognostic value of the grading.
Methods: The MRI scans and medical records of 924 patients with histologically diagnosed nondisseminated nasopharyngeal carcinoma were reviewed retrospectively.
Results: MRI-detected skull-base invasion was not found to be an independent prognostic factor for overall survival, distant metastasis-free survival, or local relapse-free survival (p > .05 for all). Grading of skull-base erosion according to the site of invasion was found to be an independent prognostic factor for both overall survival (p = .003 and p = .006, respectively) and distant metastasis-free survival (p = .001 for both) in the 512 patients with skull-base invasions and 315 patients with T3 disease.
Conclusions: MRI-detected skull-base invasion is not an independent prognostic factor for nasopharyngeal carcinoma. However, grading according to the site of invasion as either low grade or severe has prognostic value.
Copyright © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.