Purpose: To define failure patterns and predictive factors in esophageal cancer patients who had a pathologic complete response (pCR) after preoperative concurrent chemoradiotherapy (PCRT).
Methods and materials: We performed a retrospective analysis of 61 esophageal cancer patients who were enrolled in prospective studies and showed pCR after PCRT. All of the patients had squamous cell carcinoma. Of the patients, 40 were treated with hyperfractionated radiotherapy (4,560 cGy in 28 fractions) with 5-fluorouracil (5-FU) and cisplatin (FP), and 21 patients received conventional fractionation radiotherapy with capecitabine and cisplatin (XP).
Results: The median follow-up time was 45.2 months (range, 6.5-162.3 months). The 5-year overall survival (OS) and disease-free survival rates (DFS) were 60.2% and 80.4%, respectively. In univariate analysis, age and lymph node (LN) metastasis were poor prognostic factors for OS, and pretreatment weight loss (>2 kg) was a poor prognostic factor for DFS. In multivariate analysis, lymph node metastasis and pretreatment weight loss were independent prognostic factors for OS and DFS. Nine patients (15%) had disease recurrence. Of the nine patients, 5 patients had locoregional failure, 1 patients had distant metastasis, and 3 patients had distant and locoregional failure. In-field failure occurred in 5 patients; out-of-field failure occurred in 1 patient; both in-field and out-of-field failure occurred in 2 patients; and both marginal and out-of-field failure occurred in 1 patient.
Conclusions: Even in pCR patients, the most common failure site was within the radiation field, which suggests that more efficient local treatment is needed. Tumor recurrence was more common in patients with older age and with pretreatment weight loss.
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