Detailed analysis of recovery process of cranial nerve palsy after IMRT-based comprehensive treatment in nasopharyngeal carcinoma

BACKGROUND: Cranial nerve (CN) palsy due to cancer involvement has been considered as an unfavorable prognostic factor for patients with nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC). We assessed the role of IMRT based treatment on the recovery of CN palsy and investigated the prognostic value of complete recovery of CN palsy. METHODS: A total of 115 NPC patients with cancer-related CN palsy were included in the study. We referred CTCAE version 5.0 to evaluate the grade of CN palsy. RESULTS: All patients with grade 1 CN palsy recovered completely during the 2 years of follow-up after definite treatment. Most grade 2 palsy could change gradually to grade 1 palsy or complete recovery during 2 years of follow-up. Patients with more than 2 symptoms of CN palsy had poor 3-year disease-free survival (DFS) than these with 1 or 2 symptoms (60.3% vs. 84.9%, HR 0.25, 95% CI 0.07–0.89, P = 0.001). There were no significant differences for PFS, OS, DMFS and LRFS between patients with complete recovery and non-complete recovery from CN palsy after receiving IMRT based comprehensive treatment. CONCLUSIONS: IMRT based comprehensive treatment could effectively promote the recovery of tumor-related CN palsy for NPC patient. More than 2 symptoms of CN palsy was a poor prognostic factor for DFS of NPC patients. The prognostic role of complete recovery of CN palsy was not identified in our study. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s13014-021-01846-x.