Results of the baseline positron emission tomography can customize therapy of localized esophageal adenocarcinoma patients who achieve a clinical complete response after chemoradiation.

BACKGROUND Patients with localized esophageal adenocarcinoma (EAC) who achieve a clinical complete response (clinCR) after preoperative chemoradiation (trimodality therapy; TMT) or definitive chemoradiation (bimodality therapy; BMT) live longer than those who achieve a <clinCR (Suzuki A, Xiao LC, Hayashi Y et al. Prognostic significance of baseline positron emission tomography and importance of clinical complete response in patients with esophageal or gastroesophageal junction cancer treated with definitive chemoradiotherapy. Cancer 2011; 117: 4823-4833; Cheedella NK, Suzuki A, Xiao L et al. Association between clinical complete response and pathological complete response after preoperative chemoradiation in patients with gastroesophageal cancer: analysis in a large cohort. Ann Oncol 2013; 24: 1262-1266; Ajani JA, Correa AM, Hofstetter WL et al. Clinical parameters model for predicting pathologic complete response following preoperative chemoradiation in patients with esophageal cancer. Ann Oncol 2012; 23: 2638-2642). We hypothesized that the initial standardized uptake value (iSUV) of positron emission tomography will define novel subsets of clinCR patients. METHODS We analyzed 323 EAC patients, from our prospective database, who achieved a clinCR. Various statistical methods were used to assess the influence of iSUV on patient outcome. RESULTS The median follow-up of 323 patients was 40.8 months [95% confidence interval (CI) 35.6-47.3 months]. Two hundred six (63.8%) patients had TMT and 117 (36.2%) had BMT. If iSUV was ≥6, TMT patients had a longer median OS (94.8 months; 95% CI 66.07-NA) than BMT patients (31.4 months; 95% CI 21.7-42.1; P ≤ 0.001). However, if iSUV was <6, the median OS of TMT and BMT patients was similar (P = 0.62). iSVU did not influence the pathologic complete response rate in TMT patients (P = 0.85). CONCLUSION clinCR patients with iSUV of <6 are identified as a new subset that fared equally well when treated with TMT or BMT. Future esophageal preservation strategy may be best suited for this newly identified subset of EAC patients.