Evaluation of oral tegafur‐uracil as metronomic therapy following concurrent chemoradiotherapy in patients with non‐distant metastatic TNM stage IV nasopharyngeal carcinoma

Background The study was aimed to evaluate the impact of accumulated oral tegafur-uracil (UFUR) as maintenance chemotherapy on overall survival (OS) and disease-free survival (DFS) rates after concurrent chemoradiotherapy (CCRT) for complete remission (CR) in non-distant metastatic TNM stage IV nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC). Methods Data were retrospectively analyzed from a database of patients with non-distant metastatic TNM stage IV NPC, composed of those who underwent CCRT for CR from January 2010 through December 2017. Results Thirty-three patients were treated with CCRT (the non-UFUR group), and the other 37 patients were treated with the same regimen, followed by additional oral UFUR (the UFUR group). Importantly, the 5-year OS rates were 91.89% in the UFUR group and 57.58% in the non-UFUR group (P = .004). Conclusions Adding UFUR to CCRT was found to significantly improve the DFS and OS rates of patients with non-distant metastatic TNM stage IV NPC. The authors cautiously suggest UFUR as possible maintenance therapy following CCRT.