Weekly docetaxel (D) versus daily low dose cisplatin (P)/ fluorouracil (F) as neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy (CRT) in patients with advanced esophageal cancer: Nonrandomized phase II results of a single institute

4259 Background: (D) is now introduced as an agent for chemoradiotherapy in patients with head and neck cancer. We began to use (D) consecutively in patients with advanced esophageal cancer from January 2004 as an agent for neoadjuvant CRT, when the tumor was suspicious for invading to adjacent organs. We compared both pathologic effects and adverse events between (D) and (P) + (F) CRT as a neoadjuvant treatment. Methods: The neoadjuvant regimen was 40Gys of radiation with weekly (D: 10mg/m2) or daily (P: 10mg/body) + (F: 500mg/body). During CRT, adverse events were recorded according to NCI-CTC (ver.2.0). A month following CRT, transthoracic esophagectomy with lymph nodes dissection was performed, and pathologic effects of neoadjuvant CRT were judged. We consider a case as a pathologic responder when viable cancer cells account for less than 1/3 of tumor tissue microscopically. Results: 11 pts received (D) CRT, and 28 pts received (P) + (F) CRT. Pathologic response rate was 73% in (D), and 66% in (P) + (...