Recent advances in chemoradiotherapy for esophageal cancer patients.
Conservative therapies such as chemotherapy, radiotherapy, laser therapy and hyperthermia therapy have provided esophageal cancer patients with limited effects and little hope. However, since the appearance of cisplatin (CDDP), the results of chemotherapy have gradually improved in combination with radiotherapy. Ohtsu reported that the survival outcome of patients receiving CDDP/5-FU plus irradiation was almost equal to that for operative results1). New anticancer drugs, such as taxane, have been reported to have a high response rate, even a complete response rate. However, there has been no obvious evidence showing that adjuvant chemoradiotherapy results in better survival. In this report, an outline of chemoradiotherapy for esophageal cancer patients and prospects for the future were given.
