Radiotherapy for Esophageal Adenocarcinoma

Abstract

Adenocarcinomas occur in distal esophagus and often involve esophagogastric junction. Radiotherapy plays a key role in treatment, often in combination with chemotherapy and surgery in multi-modalities management. For resectable esophageal primaries, neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy plus surgery can downstage disease and improve outcome over surgery alone. For patients with unresectable primaries or medically unfit for surgery, definitive chemoradiotherapy was found to improve survival over radiotherapy alone. For patients who had residual disease or involved margins after primary surgery, adjuvant chemoradiotherapy in postoperative setting was shown to improve local control and survival. Palliative radiotherapy can also be used to relieve local symptoms like dysphagia or bleeding. Careful radiotherapy planning is required to ensure adequate dose to target volumes without overdose to normal organs.