Patients presented with non-keratinizing NPC and stage T3-4NxM0/TxN2-3M0 are randomly assigned to receive cisplatin-based (control arm) with carboplatin-based (investigational arm) chemoradiotherapy. Patients in the investigational arm receive docetaxel (75mg/m2 on day 1), carboplatin (AUC 4 on day 1) every three weeks for two cycles before the radiotherapy, and then receive radical radiotherapy and carboplatin (AUC 5 on day 1) every three weeks for three cycles during radiotherapy. Patients in the control arm receive docetaxel (75mg/m2 on day 1), cisplatin (75mg/m2 on day 1) every three weeks for two cycles before the radiotherapy, and then receive radical radiotherapy and cisplatin (100mg/m2 on day 1) every three weeks for three cycles during radiotherapy. Patients are stratified according to stage. The primary end point is overall survival (OS). Secondary end points include failure-free survival (FFS), distant failure-free survival (D-FFS), locoregional failure-free survival (LR-FFS), initial response rates after treatments and toxic effects. All efficacy analyses are conducted in the intention-to-treat population; the safety population include only patients who receive their randomly assigned treatment.
The purpose of this study is to compare cisplatin-based with carboplatin-based chemoradiotherapy in patients with locoregionally advanced nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC), in order to confirm the value of carboplatin-based chemoradiotherapy in NPC patients.