Clinicopathological Characteristics and Prognosis of Nasopharyngeal Lymphoepithelial Carcinoma: A Population-Based Retrospective Study

BACKGROUND: The aim of this study was to establish a predictive model for prognostic factors and overall survival (OS) in nasopharyngeal lymphoepithelial carcinoma (NLEC) patients. MATERIAL/METHODS: The data of 538 NLEC patients diagnosed between 1988 and 2015 were extracted from the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results database. Patients who were diagnosed from 1988 to 1999 were included in the validation cohort, and those diagnosed from 2000 to 2015 in the primary cohort. Least absolute shrinkage and selection operator and multivariate Cox regression analyses were performed. The discrimination and calibration capabilities of the predictive models were evaluated using the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve and calibration plot, respectively. RESULTS: Radiotherapy (P<0.0001), early-stage cancer based on the American Joint Committee on Cancer (AJCC) staging system (P<0.0001), younger age (P=0.0005) were associated with better OS rates. In the primary cohort, the areas under the ROC curves (AUC) of the nomogram for predicting 1-, 10-, and 15-year OS were 0.749, 0.754, and 0.81, respectively. Meanwhile, in the validation cohort, the AUC of the nomogram for predicting 1-, 10-, and 15-year OS were 0.692, 0.692, and 0.682, respectively. Furthermore, the calibration plot exhibited optimal agreements between the nomogram-predicted and actual 1-, 10-, and 15-year OS in both cohorts. The 1-, 10-, and 15-year OS rates were 93.6%, 62.7%, and 49.9%, respectively. CONCLUSIONS: Age, early-stage cancer based on the AJCC staging system, radiotherapy, and gender can be used to predict OS in nasopharyngeal lymphoepithelial carcinoma patients.