Evaluation of the Reliability of Clinical Staging of T2 N0 Esophageal Cancer: A Review of The Society of Thoracic Surgeons Database [1]
Optimal therapy (surgery vs multimodality therapy) for clinical T2N0 esophageal cancer is controversial. This STS Database review assessed accuracy of clinical staging compared to pathologic staging in nearly 500 patients who underwent initial resection. T2N0 was confirmed in 27%, 26% were downstaged, and 47% were upstaged. The most common cause for upstaging was nodal involvement without change in T status. In another group of clinical T2N0 patients who underwent induction therapy, upstaging was evident in the resection specimen in 38%.