Closing the loop around esophagectomy after neoadjuvant therapy.

摘要

I read with interest the article by Schneider et al evaluating the ability to predict histopatho-logic regression after neoadjuvant therapy for esophageal cancer with routine staging studies including upper endoscopy, endoscopic ultrasound, CT and PET scans.1 The authors concluded that none of the tests were accurate enough to reliably exclude the presence of residual disease. This is an important finding, but it needs to be understood in a broader context. First, one of the rationales for trying to identify complete pathologic response is to then spare these patients an esophagectomy.