Neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy and surgery compared with surgery alone in squamous cell carcinoma of the esophagus

Despite progress in recent years in methods of diagnosis and surgical treatment of esophageal cancer, there is still controversy about the benefits from neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy.

To analise the survival of patients submitted to esophagectomy for squamous cell carcinoma of the esophagus with or without neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy.

A retrospective, non-randomized study conducted using the medical charts of patients operated for squamous cell carcinoma of the esophagus at the School of Medical Sciences, University of Campinas (UNICAMP), Campinas, São Paulo, Brazil between 1979 and 2006. The Kaplan-Meier analysis was used to calculate survival curves and the log-rank test to compare data in each group. The significance level was settled as 5%.

A total of 123 patients were evaluated in this study, divided into three groups: I-26 (21.2%) patients submitted to esophagectomy alone; II-81 (65.8%) patients submitted to neoadjuvant radiotherapy plus esophagectomy and III-16 (13%) patients submitted to neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy plus esophagectomy. A statistically significant survival was recorded between the groups (log rank=6.007; P=0.05), survival being greatest in the group submitted to neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy, followed by the group submitted to neoadjuvant radiotherapy compared to the group submitted to esophagectomy alone as the initial treatment of choice.

Radiotherapy and chemotherapy neoadjuvants in patients with squamous cell carcinoma of the esophagus offers benefits and increases survival.