As time goes by–developments in surgery for esophageal cancer in the new millennium

Summary Background In the last two decades, both treatment options and epidemiological features of cancer have changed. We studied the influence of related parameters on the outcome of patients undergoing resection for esophageal carcinoma. Methods We analyzed 499 consecutive patients who underwent esophagectomy for carcinoma since January 2000, comparing 2000–2010 with 2011–2021 and examining changes over time. Results The percentage of men (87.9 vs. 86.9%; p = 0.74) in the two groups was unchanged, whereas mean age increased significantly from 60.8 to 65.2 years ( p = 0.000). There was a trend towards an increase of adenocarcinoma (gamma = 0.120, ASE = 0.055). Despite significantly increasing use of induction chemoradiotherapy ( p = 0.000) from 7.14% in 2000 to 68.9% in 2021 the distribution of pT, pN stage, grading and the rate of positive lateral resection margins remained unchanged. When comparing the two periods, the overall 30-day mortality was 4.4 vs. 4.2% ( p = 0.56), recurrence-free survival was 36.9 vs. 38% at 60 months and 33.9 vs. 36.4% at 120 months ( p = 0.93). Tumor-associated survival was 41.1 vs. 45% at 60 months and 35.5 vs. 38.7% at 120 months ( p = 0.78). None of the survival rates differed significantly. A multivariable analysis of year of surgery, age, sex, histological subtype, grading, pT, pN, lateral resection margin, and induction therapy showed that only higher pT ( p = 0.01), positive pN ( p = 0.000), positive lateral margin ( p = 0.003), squamous cell carcinoma ( p = 0.04) and higher grading ( p = 0.026) had a statistically significant, independent, negative influence on prognosis. Conclusion Optimized noninvasive and invasive therapeutic modalities have produced only marginal improvement in the prognosis of esophageal cancer within the last two decades.