A Phase II Clinical Trial on Comparison of Effectiveness and Safeness of Different Amifostine Regimens

RATIONALE: Nasopharyngeal carcinoma is a kind of malignant tumor which is treated primarily by radiation therapy. This therapeutic strategy often causes adverse effects such as dysfunction of salivary gland and lesion of oral mucosa. With concurrent chemotherapy, it may also cause toxicity to kidney, bone marrow, and other organs or tissues. When administered prior to chemoradiotherapy, Amifostine has been proved to has the ability of protecting the normal from these adverse effects so as to improve the patient tolerance. However, there are also some side effects of Amifostine itself, such as nausea, vomiting and hypotension, especially when high dose is applied. PURPOSE: This phase II randomized controlled trial is to study the protecting effect and its safety of Amifostine every-other-day regimen compared with standard everyday regimen on adverse effects such as myelosuppression, xerostomia and mucositis, in patients with nasopharyngeal carcinoma Stage T1-T4, N0-N3, M0 and undergoing concurrent chemoradiotherapy.