Esophageal Cancer: Recent advances

Esophageal carcinoma has, over the past decade, undergone a sea of change, not only in its pathological distribution, but also in the diagnosis, staging and subsequent management. Although the advent of better imaging techniques has helped in diagnosing patients at an earlier period, the majority of them have unresectable disease at the time of presentation. Despite aggressive treatment protocols involving either one or a combination of the options of surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy, the five-year survival remains dismal in the order of 10 to 15%. The two most commonly used surgical techniques for resecting the esophagus, the Ivor Lewis and the trans-hiatal esophagectomy, have similar results in terms of morbidity, mortality and, more importantly, five-year survival following resection. There has been an increasing interest in the surgical treatment of carcinoma esophagus by a minimally invasive approach, as meta-analysis of clinical series have shown that a faster recovery time without any statistically significant difference in the in-hospital mortality or morbidity when compared to conventional surgery. Nonrandomized studies suggest that patients receiving neoadjuvant chemo-radiation have a five year survival advantage compared with those treated with surgery alone, especially if they had a complete histological response to the preoperative regimen. Lastly, palliative procedures, form the mainstay of management of patients with non-resectable disease.