News Release

Patients with resectable esophageal adenocarcinoma benefit from neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy

Peer-Reviewed Publication

World Journal of Gastroenterology

Esophageal carcinoma (EC) is one of the major malignant diseases worldwide. Surgery alone cannot obtain satisfactory effects in patients with EC. Neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy has been a hotspot for EC treatment research. Several related randomized controlled trials (RCTs) have been published, but opinions vary among clinicians as to the therapeutic effect of the new method. It remains uncertain whether patients with resectable EC can benefit from neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy.

A research article to be published on December 21, 2009 in the World Journal of Gastroenterology addresses this question. The research team from China selected eleven randomized controlled trials (RCTs) including 1308 patients. The reuslts showed neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy significantly improved the overall survival compared with surgery alone. Histological subgroup analysis indicated that esophageal squamous cell carcinoma did not benefit from neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy.

Their meta-analysis suggest that patients with esophageal adenocarcinoma (EAC) may be the real beneficiaries of the treatment protocol. Compared with patients treated by surgery alone, patients receiving neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy more likely obtained complete resection and had lower local cancer recurrence. Neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy was connected with a little higher mortality after surgery. But it did not increase the incidence of postoperative complications.

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Reference: Jin HL, Zhu H, Ling TS, Zhang HJ, Shi RH. Neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy for resectable esophageal carcinoma: A meta-analysis. World J Gastroenterol 2009; 15(47): 5983-5991 http://www.wjgnet.com/1007-9327/15/5983.asp

Correspondence to: Rui-Hua Shi, Professor, Department of Gastroenterology, the First Affiliated Hospital of Nanjing Medical University, 300 Guangzhou Road, Nanjing 210029, Jiangsu Province, China. ruihuashi@126.com Telephone: +86-25-83718836-6035 Fax: +86-25-83674636

About World Journal of Gastroenterology

World Journal of Gastroenterology (WJG), a leading international journal in gastroenterology and hepatology, has established a reputation for publishing first class research on esophageal cancer, gastric cancer, liver cancer, viral hepatitis, colorectal cancer, and H pylori infection and provides a forum for both clinicians and scientists. WJG has been indexed and abstracted in Current Contents/Clinical Medicine, Science Citation Index Expanded (also known as SciSearch) and Journal Citation Reports/Science Edition, Index Medicus, MEDLINE and PubMed, Chemical Abstracts, EMBASE/Excerpta Medica, Abstracts Journals, Nature Clinical Practice Gastroenterology and Hepatology, CAB Abstracts and Global Health. ISI JCR 2008 IF: 2.081. WJG is a weekly journal published by WJG Press. The publication dates are the 7th, 14th, 21st, and 28th day of every month. WJG is supported by The National Natural Science Foundation of China, No. 30224801 and No. 30424812, and was founded with the name of China National Journal of New Gastroenterology on October 1, 1995, and renamed WJG on January 25, 1998.


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