Dr Gangaram-Panday on Definitive Chemoradiotherapy in Esophageal Cancer

“We saw that patients in [our] cohort had a 3-year OS rate of [approximately] 25% and an OS rate of 13.5% at 5 years. [These outcomes] are better than best supportive care but it’s important to tell patients that there is a 90-day mortality [rate] of [approximately] 7.6%.”

Sanjiv Gangaram-Panday, PhD, of Erasmus University Rotterdam, discussed findings from a Dutch population-based cohort study of definitive chemoradiotherapy for the treatment of patients with esophageal adenocarcinoma.

To conduct their study, Gangaram-Panday and colleagues investigated the survival outcomes of patients who underwent definitive chemoradiotherapy in the Netherlands from 2015 to 2022, he said. Patients with adenocarcinoma tend to respond less to chemoradiotherapy compared with those with squamous cell disease, he explained. Gangaram-Panday noted that the study was limited by the fact that patients could have only been selected from the Netherlands Cancer Registry if they completed or nearly completed the treatment regimen.

Data from the analysis presented during the 2025 ESMO Gastrointestinal Cancers Congress showed that patients included in the study (n = 872) experienced a 3-year overall survival (OS) rate of 25% and a 5-year OS rate of 13.5%, Gangaram-Panday said. The median OS was 18.9 months (95% CI, 17.8-20.9) and the median progression-free survival was 11.2 months (95% CI, 8.8-13.4).

The cohort of patients included in the study was mostly male (80%) and most patients had a World Health Organization performance status of 0 or 1. Fifty percent of patients had intestinal type disease. Further data revealed that prognostic factors included gender (female vs male; HR 0.70; 95% CI, 0.57-0.86), cT-category (HR 1.33; 95% CI, 1.11-1.60), cN-category (HR 1.23; 95% CI, 1.04-1.48), tumor differentiation grade (HR 1.37; 95% CI,1.13-1.66), and location (HR 1.34; 95% CI, 1.04–1.72).

Gangaram-Panday noted that these outcomes are superior compared with best supportive care, but patients should be aware that there is a 90-day mortality rate of approximately 7.6% with definitive chemoradiotherapy. Understanding these outcomes could help patients make an informed decision regarding their treatment, he concluded.