A longitudinal assessment of major mouthwashes used in alleviating pain and xerostomia among advanced nasopharyngeal carcinoma patients receiving chemoradiotherapy.

Objective: This longitudinal study aimed to evaluate the overall efficacy of mouthwashes in oral mucositis pain and mucositis xerostomia in advanced nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) patients undergoing concurrent chemoradiotherapy (CCRT) at different phases throughout treatment.

Methods: A longitudinal study enrolled 79 advanced NPC subjects receiving CCRT. The subjects were interviewed prospectively three times over 7 weeks for pain and xerostomia scores based on the various types of mouthwash used. The median pain score difference and median xerostomia score difference were utilised to determine mouthwash superiority.

Results: Participants completed three interviews, during which 480 instances of mouthwash use were observed throughout different phases of the treatment period. The results showed that the median pain scores between mouthwashes differed significantly, H-Stat(3) = 30.0, 25.7 and 26.0, respectively, with p < 0.001 for all three interviews. The pain score reductions of lidocaine mouthwash (median = 2, interquartile range (IQR) = 3, 2 and 2.75 over the three interviews, respectively) were significantly higher than those of benzydamine and sodium bicarbonate mouthwashes. There were no significant differences between the studied mouthwashes in their xerostomia score reductions.

Conclusions: Lidocaine mouthwash was superior in managing oral mucositis pain at all phases throughout the entire chemoradiotherapy treatment for advanced NPC patients. There was insufficient evidence to determine the preferred mouthwash for treating oral mucositis xerostomia.