Publication:

Advanced stage nasopharyngeal carcinoma in children

Nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) is common in adult and elderly population, however, the incidence among children is still very low worldwide. Due to its rarity and non-specific clinical presentation, the diagnosis in children is often delayed and misinterpreted. The difficulty in reaching the final diagnosis was related to its hidden anatomical location, raising challenges in performing endoscopy and biopsy in children to obtain the precise histopathologic feature. We reported two cases on nasopharyngeal carcinoma in children with two different peculiar complaints. The first patient was 12 years old boy who complained of multiple recurrent unilateral masses on the left neck and history of nosebleeds with an unknown history of the previous histopathology features of the neck masses obtained by complete surgical neck mass removal beforehand. The second patient was 15 years old boy with main complaint of chronic headache, accompanied by doubled vision with apparent family history of malignancy, particularly nasopharyngeal carcinoma. Based on the history of illness, physical examination, imaging, and histopathology, we concluded that both patients were diagnosed with advanced stage nasopharyngeal carcinoma with different types of histopathologic feature.