Present status on treatment of esophageal cancer in China

The treatment of carcinoma of the esophagus is a challenging problem to clinicians. The 5-year survival rate of surgery reported from large centers is about 25-30%, with resectability rate around 85-90% and operation mortality rate around 5%. However, this is based on highly selected cases. The 5-year survival rate of radiation therapy is about 9-16%, while the patients receiving radiation therapy were mostly the late cases. Pre-operative radiation seems to improve the results of surgery, but more randomized control clinical studies are needed. A combination of chemotherapy with radiation might improve the short-term response rates. Chemotherapy alone may provide some benefits for patients. Intracavitary microwave hyperthermia might open a possibility in the improvement of treatment results in combination with radiation and/or chemotherapy.