Some patients and oncologists choose to treat localized esophageal cancer with definitive chemotherapy and radiation therapy rather than surgery. A subset of these patients have local relapse without distant metastases and therefore have no other curative intent treatment option but salvage esophagectomy.
Department of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery, The University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX 77030, USA. sswisher@mdanderson.org