Standard oversimplification.

If you thought the recently reported Chinese trial reporting improved survival with expert endoscopic resection rather than reirradiation for recurrent nasopharyngeal cancer had the last word, rad oncs from MSKCC and Hong Kong say not so fast. Both groups question if the reirradiation dose surpassed a previously established benchmark of 68 Gy, and the authors reply that 10% did. More than that, both groups take issue with the strongly worded conclusion that surgery should now be the “standard of care.” Yep, they went there. Instead, they’d like to make a more nuanced declaration that surgery is appropriate for the highly-selected subset of patients with minimum distance of 5 mm between the tumour and internal carotid artery, absence of retropharyngeal or unresectable nodal involvement, and no T3 extent other than sphenoid floor involvement. | Tringale / Chua / Liu, Lancet Oncol 2021