Background: There is much controversy about the optimal resection for carcinoma of the esophagus. Little is known about the pattern of recurrence after transhiatal resection for esophageal carcinoma.
Study design: We retrospectively reviewed the charts of 149 patients who underwent transhiatal esophagectomy for carcinoma of the mid or distal esophagus or gastroesophageal junction between June 1993 and June 1997. Recurrence was classified as locoregional or distant recurrence. Nine patients with macroscopically evident tumor left after resection and three patients (2.0%) who died in the hospital were excluded from the analysis. This left 137 patients; 105 men and 32 women with a median age 65 years (range 37 to 84 years).
Results: There were 95 adenocarcinomas (69.3%) and 42 squamous cell carcinomas (30.7%). Overall the median followup was 24.0 months (range 1.4 to 69.2 months). For patients alive at the end offollowup without recurrence, the median followup was 36.5 months (range 23.6 to 69.2 months). Seven patients died of other causes. The median interval between operation and recurrence was 11 months (range 1.4 to 62.5 months) for patients who had recurrence, with no significant difference in interval between locoregional and systemic recurrence. Seventy-two of the 137 patients (52.6%) developed recurrent disease. Thirty-two patients (23.4%) developed locoregional recurrence only, 21 patients (15.3%) developed systemic recurrence only, and 19 patients (13.9%) had a combination of both. In only 8.0% of all patients was there recurrence in the cervical lymph nodes. The most frequent sites of distant recurrence were liver (37.5%), bone (25.0%), and lung (17.5%). Recurrence was related to postoperative lymph node status (p<0.001) and the radicality of the operation (p<0.001) in multivariate analysis. Recurrence was not associated with localization or histologic type of the tumor.
Conclusions: Recurrence after transhiatal resection is an early event. Almost 40% of patients developed locoregional recurrent disease. For this patient group a more extended procedure may be of benefit, especially in the patients (23.4%) with locoregional recurrence in whom this is the only site of recurrent disease. But the potential benefit of a more extended procedure has to be balanced against a possible increase in perioperative morbidity and mortality.