Key points
1: Surgery for hypopharyngeal cancers remained unsatisfactory especially for the patients with advanced stages.
2: Non-surgical approaches such as IC, CCRT and radiotherapy were considered more and more for advanced HPSCC patients, however, we have not reached an agreement for the non-surgical treatments due to the limited clinical studies.
3: IC followed by CCRT was beneficial for survival of HPSCC patients when compared to IC followed by RT alone in IC responders but not in all the patients and IC non-responders.
4: IC followed by CCRT was the independent protective factor for LRPFS and OS.
5: IC followed by CCRT did not bring about the severer acute toxicities for HPSCC patients when compared to IC followed by RT alone.