A Resected Case of a Small Cell Carcinoma of the Esophagus and Analysis of Cases in the Literature

Koichi Sugiura, Soji Ozawa, Yuko Kitagawa, Nobuhiko Okamoto, Yoshimasa Shimizu, Kazuhito Yano and Masaki Kitajima

Department of Surgery, School of Medicine, Keio University

Small cell carcinoma of the esophagus is relatively rare, has a poor prognosis, and yet has no standard therapy. We report resection of small cell carcinoma of the esophagus diagnosed in the early stage and whose course we followed up. We review the treatment and prognosis of small cell carcinoma of the esophagus by analyzing our case and cases in the literature. Our patient, a 70 years old woman, had superficial small cell carcinoma of the esophagus with no lymph node or distant metastasis. Eight months after curative resection, she remains alive and recurrence-free. Analysis of cases in the literature showed 5-year survival of 9% and 50% survival of 6 months. Survival in M0 cases (n=106) was longer than that in M1 cases (n=50) (p=0.004). Survival in N0M0 cases (n=28) was similar that in N0M1 cases (n=57) (p=0.15). Survival in M0 cases treated by combined surgery and radiotherapy/chemotherapy (n=31) was longer than that in cases treated otherwise (n=67) (p<0.0001). We concluded that the patients with small cell carcinoma of the esophagus treated with combined surgery and radiotherapy/chemotherapy could expect relatively long survival.

Key words
esophageal carcinoma, small cell carcinoma

Reprint requests
Koichi Sugiura Department of Surgery, School of Medicine, Keio University
35 Shinanomachi, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo, 160-8582 JAPAN

Accepted
September 24, 2003

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