Carcinoma of the esophagus seen in a 12-year period at Queens Hospital Center.

One hundred forty patients with carcinoma of the esophagus treated over a 12-year period at Queens Hospital Center were reviewed. Comparable numbers of patients were assigned at random to radiation therapy alone, surgical treatment with radiation, or treatment with combinations of radiation and chemotherapy pre- or postoperatively. Surgical mortality (survival 1 month or less) was 9 patients of 34, or approximately 26%. Mean survival including the early deaths was 7.5 months. Deaths were primarily due to respiratory tract complications, either alone or in combination, with three cases of anastomotic leaks, sepsis, inanition, and progressing carcinoma. Fifty-two patients received radiation therapy alone. Although there were only six deaths (10%) within the first month of treatment, average survival was 8.4 months, only marginally greater than those treated by surgery. Of 13 patients treated with combined radiation and chemotherapy, no deaths occurred within the first month of treatment, but the average survival was only 6.5 months. Of nine patients treated with chemotherapy alone, no deaths occurred within the first month of treatment, but mean survival of this small group was only 4.9 months. Efficacy of chemotherapy and radiation therapy as definitive, adjuvant, or palliative therapy, in spite of recent somewhat optimistic reports, remains to be proven. Exploratory surgery should be retained as an essential staging and therapeutic modality in those patients in whom definite evidence establishing inoperability is lacking; ie, tumor fixation to vital structures, distant metastases, and other medical contraindications to surgery. Endoscopic instrumentation with the yttrium aluminum garnet laser appears to have a future as preliminary to surgery or definitive (palliative) management of obstructing esophageal carcinoma.