[Perioperative chemotherapy of squamous cell cancer of the esophagus]

In the majority of patients with esophageal cancer local tumor infiltration and/or distant metastases are responsible for the poor prognosis. Therefore to improve life expectancy additional modalities--chemotherapy alone or in combination with simultaneous radiation--have been introduced perioperatively. In spite of a possible increase of resectability convincing data are lacking which could argue for an uncontrolled introduction of the neoadjuvant approach outside investigational studies in early tumor stages (T1, T2).