Susan G. Urba, MD

Esophageal cancer is a relatively rare but deadly cancer in the United States. Even in patients with limited locoregional disease at the time of diagnosis, who have received aggressive multimodality therapies as part of clinical protocols, median survival is only 17 months and 3-year survival, only 30%.[1,2] Patients with metastatic disease have a 6-month median survival, which is not improved by the administration of chemotherapy.