Original article: general thoracicValue of radiotherapy after radical surgery for esophageal carcinoma: a report of 495 patients
Section snippets
Material and methods
From September 1986 through December 1997, 495 patients with esophageal carcinoma who had undergone radical resection were divided into two groups: a surgery-alone group (S) of 275 patients and a surgery plus radiotherapy group (S + R) of 220 patients. Randomization was carried out weekly at a joint conference of physicians in the Departments of Thoracic Surgical Oncology, Radiation Oncology, Imaging, Pathology, andMedical Oncology. All patients with esophageal cancer who had undergone radical
Survival rates
Overall 1-, 3-, 5-, and 10-year survival rates were 79.3%, 47.1%, 39.4%, and 29.8% respectively. Five-year survival rates of stage I and IIa patients and stage IIb and III patients were 52.3% and 28%, respectively (Fig 1). This difference was significant (p = 0.0000).
The 1-, 3-, and 5-year survival rates of the S and S + R groups (excluding the 54 patients excluded from the S + R group) were 79.1%, 43.5%, and 37.1% for the S group and 79.3%, 50.9%, and 41.3% for the S + R group (Fig 2). These
Coment
Preoperative irradiation therapy is an accepted modality in the treatment of esophageal cancer. The therapy is thought to improve resection rates, increase survival rates, and decrease lymph node metastases 1, 2, 3. In contrast, our series of patients who underwent surgery plus postoperative radiotherapy had an overall 5-year survival rate (39.4%) that was higher than the 5-year survival rates in two other studies (23% and 29.6%) 4, 5. Our results are similar to those of three other studies
Acknowledgements
We thank Joe McLaughlin, MD, for his kind revision, especially of the English syntax.
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Dr Yang passed away on August 4, 2000.