Evaluation of survival and recurrence patterns in esophageal cancer patients with pathological response to neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy

Introduction
There have been a limited number of studies conducted to determine the pattern of relapse and survival in patients after neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy and surgery for esophageal cancer.

Aim
To evaluate the survival and recurrence patterns in esophageal cancer patients with a pathologic response to neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy.

Material and methods
This retrospective study was performed on 159 esophageal cancer patients receiving neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy. A checklist of demographic and clinicopathological variables was filled. Then, survival and recurrence patterns in esophageal cancer patients with complete and near complete pathologic responses to neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy were evaluated.

Results
Among 159 of 1117 patients who met the inclusion criteria, 147 patients had a complete pathological response and 12 had a near complete pathological response. In this study variables included age, type of tumor and tumor distance from the incisors, which showed no significant difference, and among them, only sex and addiction were associated with the results. The overall survival and 1 year and 3 years disease-free survival were 59.1 ±2.5%, 89.4 ±2.7%, 62.8 ±5.7% respectively.

Conclusions
Almost all patients with complete pathological responses had well-differentiated cells and those with near complete responses had moderately differentiated cells; the most common type of recurrence was observed in the systemic type of disease and the most common sites were the lungs and liver. Women and people with no history of addiction showed better responses to treatment and had higher levels of survival.