[Cancer of the upper cervico-thoracic esophagus]

Between 1984 and 1990, 90 operations were performed for carcinoma of cervical and cervicothoracic esophagus. All tumors were squamous cell carcinoma. Of these patients, 78 underwent esophagectomy, and 12 had had a gastric by pass. Visceral remplacements employed the whole stomach. Only one cervicothoraco-laparotomy was performed. The operative mortality was 6.6% (no difference between mortality rate associated with pharyngogastric anastomosis (5.3%) and that with cervical esogastric anastomosis (7.1%). The 78 resections included 55 esophagectomies for cure (70.5%) and palliative procedure for the 23 other patients. Post operative complication rate was 38% and 5-year survival rate was 12%. One study suggested that resectability and immediate post operative results of cervical or cervicothoracic esophagus cancer are not different from these of intrathoracic esophageal cancer. These results encouraged an aggressive surgical approach; whole gastric pull up seems to be the safest and most reliable method for cervical anastomosis as well as for pharyngeal anastomosis, difficulty of correct lymphadenectomy, low 5-year survival, advocated adjuvant radiotherapy and/or chemotherapy.