Objective To analyze the clinical characteristics of patients treated with esophagectomy following endoscopic submucosal dissection (ESD) for early stage esophageal cancer or precancerosis and the reasons for esophagectomy. Methods We retrospectively analyzed the clinical data of 57 patients who were treated with esophagectomy following ESD in West China Hospital and Shanxian Hygeia Hospital from January 2012 through October 2016. There were 42 males and 15 females at age of 65.4 (52–77) years. There were 15 patients of upper thoracic lesions, the middle thoracic lesions in 34 patients, and the lower thoracic lesions in 8 patients. Results The reasons for esophagectomy included 3 patients with residual tumor, 8 patients with local recurrence, 37 patients with esophageal stricture, and 9 patients with dysphagia, although the diameter was larger than 1.0 cm. The pathology after esophagectomy revealed that tumor was found in 16 patients, including 3 patients with residual tumor and 8 with recurrent tumor confirmed before esophagectomy, and 5 patients with new-found recurrent tumor. Conclusion In the treatment of early stage esophageal cancer or precancerosis, the major reasons for esophagectomy following ESD include esophageal stricture, abnormal esophageal dynamics, local residual or recurrence.
Endoscopic resection and surgical resection are the two major therapeutic methods for early esophageal cancer. Endoscopic resection is safe and minimally invasive, but lymph node dissection can not be performed. Although surgery provides a rather thorough resection of the lesions and affected lymph nodes, surgical trauma brings certain negative impact on patients' long-term life quality. A comprehensive assessment of the patient's general condition, the risk of diseased lymph node metastasis, and the risk of the treatment itself is an important measure to optimize treatment decisions and formulate personalized treatment plans.
ObjectiveTo compare the short- and long-term efficacy of surgery and endoscopy in the treatment of early esophageal cancer by a systematic review and meta-analysis.MethodsWe extracted data independently from The Cochrane Library, PubMed, EMbase, Web of Science for studies comparing surgery with endoscopy from 2010 to 2020. The primary outcomes including R0 resection rate, long-term overall survival (OS), disease-specific survival (DSS), major complications, recurrence, hospital stay and cost. Meta-analysis was performed using RevMan 5.3 and Engauge Digitizer was used to extract survival curves from relevant literature, and relevant data were calculated based on statistical methods. ResultsA total of 17 studies involving 3 705 patients were included. It was found that patients in the surgery group had a higher R0 resection rate compared with the endoscopic group (OR=0.13, 95%CI 0.07 to 0.27, P<0.001, I2=6%). The total complications rate of resection of esophageal cancer was higher than that of the endoscopic group (OR=0.28, 95%CI 0.16 to 0.50, P<0.001, I2=68%). The length of hospitalization in the endoscopic group was obviously shorter than that in the surgery group (MD=–8.28, 95%CI –12.44 to –4.13, P<0.001, I2=96%). The distant recurrence rate (OR=0.58, 95%CI 0.24 to 1.41, P=0.230, I2=0%) and the local recurrence rate after resection (OR=1.74, 95%CI 0.66 to 4.59, P=0.260, I2=40%) in the endoscopic group was similar to those of the surgery group. There was no significant difference in 5 year-OS rate between the two groups (HR=0.86, 95%CI 0.67 to 1.11, P=0.25, I2=0%), which was subdivided into two groups: adenocarcinoma (HR=0.55, 95%CI 0.15 to 2.05, P=0.37, I2=0%) and squamous cell carcinoma (HR=0.68, 95%CI 0.46 to 1.01, P=0.06, I2=0%), showing that there was no difference between the two subgroups. There was no significant difference in the DSS rate (HR=0.72, 95%CI 0.49 to 1.05, P=0.090, I2=0%) between the two groups. The cost of the surgery group was significantly higher than that of the endoscopic group (MD=–12.97, 95%CI –18.02 to –7.92, P<0.001, I2=93%).ConclusionThe evidence shows that endotherapy may be an effective treatment for early esophageal neoplasm when considering the long-term outcomes whether it is squamous or adenocarcinoma, even though it is not as effective as surgery in the short-term efficacy.
Surgery is a classic traditional method for the treatment of early-stage esophageal cancer, and it is also recognized as an effective first-choice method in the medical community. With the development of endoscopic technology, esophagus-preserving comprehensive treatment of esophageal cancer has almost the same or even better effects in some aspects in the treatment of early esophageal cancer than surgery. Many clinical guidelines have also recommended it as the first-choice treatment for early esophageal cancer. The room for surgical treatment of esophageal cancer has been further compressed. This article discusses the comprehensive treatment model of esophageal cancer from the perspective of thoracic surgery, aiming to find a new position of thoracic surgery in the treatment of esophageal cancer.
Objective To systematically evaluate the accuracy of endoscopy-based artificial intelligence (AI)-assisted diagnostic systems in the diagnosis of early-stage esophageal cancer and provide a scientific basis for its diagnostic value. MethodsPubMed, EMbase, The Cochrane Library, Web of Science, Wanfang database, VIP database and CNKI database were searched by computer to search for the relevant literature about endoscopy-based AI-assisted diagnostic systems for the diagnosis of early esophageal cancer from inception to March 2022. The QUADAS-2 was used for quality evaluation of included studies. Meta-analysis of the literature was carried out using Stata 16, Meta-Disc 1.4 and RevMan 5.4 softwares. A bivariate mixed effects regression model was utilized to calculate the combined diagnostic efficacy of the AI-assisted system and meta-regression analysis was conducted to explore the sources of heterogeneity. ResultsA total of 17 articles were included, which consisted of 13 retrospective cohort studies and 4 prospective cohort studies. The results of the quality evaluation using QUADAS-2 showed that all included literature was of high quality. The obtained meta-analysis results revealed that the AI-assisted system in the diagnosis of esophageal cancer presented a combined sensitivity of 0.94 (95%CI 0.91 to 0.96), a specificity of 0.85 (95%CI 0.74 to 0.92), a positive likelihood ratio of 6.28 (95%CI 3.48 to 11.33), a negative likelihood ratio of 0.07 (95%CI 0.05 to 0.11), a diagnostic odds ratio of 89 (95%CI 38 to 208) and an area under the curve of 0.96 (95%CI 0.94 to 0.98). ConclusionThe AI-assisted diagnostic system has a high diagnostic value for early stage esophageal cancer. However, most of the included studies were retrospective. Therefore, further high-quality prospective studies are needed for validation.