CASE REPORT article
Front. Oncol.
Sec. Head and Neck Cancer
Volume 15 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fonc.2025.1578547
Multimodal management of solitary axillary lymph node metastasis from a recurrent nasopharyngeal undifferentiated carcinoma: A case Report and review of the literature
Provisionally accepted
Houyem Mansouri1,2
Ines Zemni1,3*Samia Ben Hssine1Sabrine Boukhris1,4Leila Achouri1,2Najet Mahjoub1,5- 1Faculty of Medicine, Tunis El Manar University, Tunis, Tunis, Tunisia
- 2Department of Surgical Oncology, Regional Hospital of Jendouba, Jendouba, Tunisia
- 3Department of Surgical Oncology, Salah Azaiez Institute, Tunis, Tunisia
- 4Department of Surgical OncologyRegional Hospital, Jendouba, Tunisia
- 5Department of Oncology, Regional Hospital of Jendouba, Jendouba, Tunisia
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Introduction: Undifferentiated Nasopharyngeal carcinoma (UNPC) exhibits the highest loco-regional cervical lymph node recurrence among head and neck epithelial malignancies. Axillary lymph node recurrence in NPC is uncommon.Case description: A 44-year-old male presented with two-month history of painless swelling of the right axilla. He was diagnosed with stage IVB UNPC three years and eight months previously and had undergone neoadjuvant chemotherapy, and concurrent chemo-radiotherapy. Biopsy of the axillary swelling revealed metastatic UNPC. The patient was treated with axillary lymph node dissection followed by chemotherapy, and right axillary radiotherapy. Currently, the patient has been disease free for 12 months.To our knowledge, this is the second reported case of UNPC with isolated axillary lymph node recurrence after remission, treated with axillary lymph node dissection, chemotherapy, and radiotherapy. This case highlights a rare pattern of metastasis and underscores the need for thorough investigations and imaging in the long-term follow-up of NPC.
Keywords: Recurrence, Radiotherapy, chemotherapy, Nasophanrygeal carcinoma, Axillary lymph node metastasis
Received: 17 Feb 2025; Accepted: 19 May 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Mansouri, Zemni, Hssine, Boukhris, Achouri and Mahjoub. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Ines Zemni, Department of Surgical Oncology, Salah Azaiez Institute, Tunis, Tunisia
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