J.Jpn. Surg. Soc.. 91(9): 1364-1367, 1990

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Report on the annual meeting

EVALUATION OF MULTIDISPLINARY TREATMENT FOR CANCER OF THE THORACIC ESOPHAGUS

With remarkable improvement of operative procedures and postoperative cares, radical operation for carcinoma of the thoracic esophagus can now be performed with safety. However, long-term survival is still poor even in patients with curative resection of the primary lesion.
In this paper, we describe the long-term evaluation of multidisplinary treatment for patients with thoracic esophageal carcinoma.
The subjects of this study are patients with thoracic esophageal carcinoma from 1975 to 1989 when postoperative adjuvant therapies were routinely applied. During this period, resection was performed in 405 (77.7%) of 521 patients with carcinoma of the thoracic esophagus ; curative resection was done in 337 patients.
Death within 30 days after operation occurred in 10 patients.
Postoperative radio-chemoimmunotherapy improved the 5-year survival rate of patients without lymph node metastasis to 71.3% compared with 49.4% of patients not receiving any postoperative combined therapy (p<0.002).
In cases of n₁(+)and n₂(+), the 5-year survival rate of patients treated with aggressive chemotherapy (35.6%) was almost similar to the corresponding rate (37.3%) for patients treated with radiochemoimmunotherapy.
In cases of n₃(+) and n₄(+), remarkable improvement of the prognosis of patients who received aggressive chemotherapy was noted compared with the prognosis of patients who received radiochemoimmunotherapy.

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