[Effect of early rehabilitation training on radiation-induced trismus in nasopharyngeal carcinoma patients].

Many nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) patients could survive for a long time after radiotherapy. But the complications of radiotherapy, such as trismus, severely influence the quality of life of NPC patients. This study was to observe the effect of early rehabilitation training on radiation-induced trismus of NPC patients.A total of 108 NPC patients received rehabilitation guidance by doctors at initial radiotherapy and subjected to early rehabilitation training regularly and intensively after radical radiotherapy between Dec. 2003 and Dec. 2004 at Xiangya Hospital of Central South University. They continued on rehabilitation training out of hospital as the same in hospital. According to the data of rehabilitation training obtained by questionnaire at 1 month after radiotherapy, the patients who completed the amount of rehabilitation training (>or=75%) were brought into rehabilitation training group, the others was brought into control group. The distance between two dens incivus medialis (DDIM) of the patients was measured at 1 month and 1 year after radiotherapy.The difference of rehabilitation training score was significantly higher in rehabilitation training group than in control group (9.80+/-3.02. vs.4.75+/-1.90 at 1 month after radiotherapy, P<0.05û 9.00+/-2.67 vs. 2.20+/-0.82 at 1 year after radiotherapy, P<0.05). The occurrence rates of trismus were 44.1% at 1 month and 51.5% at 1 year after radiotherapy in rehabilitation training group, and 60.0% and 85.0% in control group. The reduction of DDIM was significantly smaller in rehabilitation training group than in control group [(0.50+/-0.48) cm vs. (1.20+/-0.74) cm at 1 month after radiotherapy, P<0.05û (0.58+/-0.62) cm vs. (2.42+/-0.84) cm at 1 year after radiotherapy, P<0.01].Early rehabilitation training is helpful to decrease the occurrence of trismus in NPC patients after radiotherapy and improve the quality of life of NPC patients.