Symptoms of nasopharyngeal carcinoma

It is recommended to go to a big city hospital for a thorough examination. Your symptoms are a little implicated.

Because the anatomical location of nasopharyngeal carcinoma is hidden, the early symptoms of nasopharyngeal carcinoma are atypical, and the early diagnosis is difficult and easy to delay, so we should be especially vigilant. Most of them have been found in the middle and late stage and have lost the best treatment opportunity.

The early symptoms of pharyngeal cancer often have no other symptoms except occasional nosebleeds or tinnitus. The symptoms of infiltration and metastasis of advanced cancer are obvious, which are described as follows:

(1) Symptoms of nose, ears, eyes and mouth

Most patients (> 98%) will have symptoms of the above-mentioned parts, but the time and order of clinical symptoms depends on the location and size of the tumor: the tumor is located at the top of the nasopharynx, with nosebleeds first, blood can be spit out from the mouth for a long time, accompanied by symptoms such as nasal congestion; The tumor is located in pharyngeal recess and other parts. Tinnitus, deafness and hearing loss often occur in the early stage, which is easily misdiagnosed as catarrhal exudative otitis media or suppurative otitis media. When cancer cells penetrate into the eye, they show unilateral exophthalmos, diplopia and eye movement disorder. Cancer infiltrates the medial flank muscle, indicating difficulty in opening the mouth. When the hypoglossal nerve is involved, the tongue muscle movement disorder occurs and the tongue leans to the healthy side.

(2) Symptoms of cranial nerves

The upward infiltration and expansion of nasopharyngeal carcinoma can involve the cranial nerves and cause corresponding symptoms. Clinically, cranial nerves ⅴ and ⅵ are the first to be involved. With the enlargement of the tumor, ⅲ, ⅳ, ⅸ and ⅹ are also damaged, while ⅰ and ⅱ are located in front of the skull, and ⅶ and ⅷ are located in the petrous part of the temporal bone, so the possibility of invasion is small. The upper cranial nerve was involved, which showed that it lost its function. Headache is usually a signal that cancer has spread to the brain. Headache is a persistent and fixed severe migraine, mostly located in the sensory distribution area of trigeminal nerve, and its nature can be swelling pain, stuffy pain or ligation pain.

(3) Neck signs

Mainly refers to the mass caused by cervical lymph node metastasis. Clinically, a painless lump in the neck can be the first symptom or even the only symptom. The mass originated from one side and increased rapidly, and then involved the contralateral neck.

Symptoms of distant metastasis

The most common sites of nasopharyngeal carcinoma metastasis are bone, lung and liver. Bone metastasis is common in pelvis, spine and limbs. Clinical observation shows that with the enlargement of cervical lymph nodes, the chances of distant metastasis increase obviously, with the distant metastasis rate of 4.8%-27%, as high as 76% at autopsy. Bone metastasis mostly shows bone pain, lung metastasis shows dyspnea and hemoptysis, and liver metastasis shows liver pain and jaundice.

(5) Physical examination

Indirect nasopharyngoscopy or fiberoptic nasopharyngoscopy: Nasopharyngeal carcinoma is easy to enter the pharyngeal recess and enter the nasopharyngeal roof and posterior wall. At the early stage, the local mucosa was rough and uneven, the blood vessels were dilated, and there were nodules and granulation-like tumors. The tumor gradually developed into cauliflower type, nodular type, ulcer type or submucosal type.

Neck palpation: The early metastasis point of nasopharyngeal carcinoma is the uppermost group of deep cervical lymph nodes, which are located in the upper part of the anterior edge of the ipsilateral sternocleidomastoid muscle. They can be connected in several sizes, hard, uneven and nodular, and do not adhere to the skin, but often adhere to deep tissues in the late stage and are not easy to move.

Advanced nasopharyngeal carcinoma metastasizes quickly, often to bone, lung, liver and other parts. The survival time is short and the cure rate is extremely low, but poorly differentiated squamous cell carcinoma and high malignant vesicular cell carcinoma are highly or moderately sensitive to radiotherapy.

Wish: health and happiness!