[A clinical study of esophagectomy after chemo-radiation therapy for advanced esophageal carcinoma]

The aim of this study was to evaluate the efficacy of preoperative neoadjuvant therapy (NAT) including chemo-radiation or radiation in patients with T3/T4 advanced esophageal squamous cell carcinoma. We reviewed 115 patients with T3/T4 tumors from January 1994 through August 2006. Forty-seven patients received NAT, and the remaining 68 patients had surgery alone. Of these 47 patients, 14 patients underwent esophagectomy following NAT, and 33 patients underwent consecutive chemoradiation. Patients treated with esophagectomy following NAT had a better two-year survival (45.5%) and the median survival time (486 days) was compared with patients treated with chemo-radiation only (10.4%, 242 days) (p = 0.026). Of these patients treated with esophagectomy following NAT, the patients undergone curative resection had a better one-year survival rate (83.3%) and the median survival time (2,055 days) was compared with the patients received with non-curative resection (20.0%, 273 days) (p = 0.042). Two patients having grade 3 effect by NAT had a long disease free survival. There was no significant difference in postoperative morbidity and mortality rate between the patients received NAT and the patients treated with surgery alone. These results suggest that NAT may be useful for advanced esophageal cancer.