Abstract: Objective To investigate the incidence and characteristic of retropharyngeal lymph nodes and explore its relationship with located invasion and metastasis of cervical lymph nodes in nasopharygeal carcinoma. Methods Retrospectively reviewed the data of MRI from 333 NPC patients with non-distant metastasis and newly diagnosed with NPC by pathology. And the 2008 staging system was used to determine the clinical stage of each NPC patients. And the rate comparison was used to explore the relationship between the RLN and the invaded lication and the metastasis of cervical lymph nodes. Results (1) The positive rate of retropharyngeal lymph node was 66.3%(unilateral was 41.4% and bilateral was 24.9%). The retropharyngeal lymph node metastasis rate of T stages was different from N stages. And the positive rate of T1 stage was significantly lower than that of T2, T3 and T4 stage（P<0.05）. N1b had a significantly lower positive rate compared with N2, N3 stage. (2) The positive rate of retropharyngeal lymph node of patients with invasions of pre-styloid space, carotid sheath, oropharynx, prevertebral muscle and medial pterygoid were significantly higher than that of patients without invasions. (3) The positive rate of cervical lymph node was 82.0%(273/333), thereinto, patients with retropharyngeal lymph node metastasis had significantly higher positive rate than those without metastasis (87.8%vs. 70.5%，P<0.05). The unilateral metastasis was lower than the bilateral (84.1% vs. 94%)(P<0.05). (4) The positive rate of cervical lymph node was not significantly different between patients with the more than 20 mm diameter of retropharyngeal lymph node and those with less than 20 mm（P＞0.05）. Conclusion (1) The high positive rate of retropharyngeal lymph node is related to the invasion of pre-styloid space, carotid sheath, oropharynx, prevertebral muscle and medial pterygoid. (2) The metastasis of retropharyngeal lymph node influences the invasion of cervical lymph node.(3) The diameter of retropharyngeal lymph node has no correlation with the located of invation of cervical lymph node.