Neoadjuvant Therapy for Locally Advanced Esophageal Cancer Should Be Targeted to Tumor Histology

Stiles and colleagues evaluated outcomes for patients with esophageal cancer undergoing surgical resection after either neoadjuvant chemoradiation or preoperative chemotherapy without radiation. The authors evaluated disease-free and cancer-specific survival from prospective data collected from 338 patients, 112 who underwent neoadjuvant chemoradiation and 226 receiving chemotherapy. Nearly all patients underwent transthoracic esophagectomy for their surgical procedure. Patients with adenocarcinoma showed an increased local tumor response but no difference in survival with neoadjuvant chemoradiation, whereas patient with squamous cell carcinoma had improved cancer-specific survival.