Towards an Organ-Sparing Approach for Locally Advanced Esophageal Cancer

Active surveillance after neoadjuvant therapies has emerged among several malignancies. During active surveillance, frequent assessments are performed to detect residual disease and surgery is only reserved for those patients in whom residual disease is proven or highly suspected without distant metastases. After neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy (nCRT), nearly one-third of esophageal cancer patients achieve a pathologically complete response (pCR). Both patients that achieve a pCR and patients that harbor subclinical disseminated disease after nCRT could benefit from an active surveillance strategy.