Is postoperative adjuvant radiotherapy necessary for patients with esophageal cancer after neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy? An analysis based on the SEER database

To evaluate the outcomes of adjuvant radiotherapy in patients with esophageal cancer (EC) who underwent esophagectomy following neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy (NCRT). The data of EC patients who received adjuvant therapy after NCRT between 2004 to 2019 was retrieved from the SEER database. The patients were split into the adjuvant radiotherapy with or without chemotherapy (RT±CT) and the adjuvant chemotherapy (CT) groups. The process of propensity score matching (PSM) was employed. Following PSM, 157 patients in total were recruited in each treatment group. There were no significant variations in either overall survival (OS) or cancer-specific survival (CSS) between the RT±CT and CT groups (median OS: 28 months versus. 51 months, =0.063; median CSS: 31 months versus. 52 months, =0.16). Within the CT group, patients with ypI/II or cI/II tumor stage, positive lymph node ratio (LNR) ≤0.1, and tumor size ≥50 mm (