For patients who underwent chemoradiotherapy, toxicity and survival data were collected prospectively using dBaseIV (Ashton-Tate Corporation, DBaseIV Software, USA) and later Microsoft Excel (Microsoft, USA). Surgical complications and survival were recorded retrospectively using the common toxicity grades of the National Cancer Institute of Canada Clinical Trials Group. Cause-specific survival analyses were undertaken by the Kaplan-Meier [...]

Full details of the eligibility and treatment plan for chemoradiotherapy and selective surgery have been reported. In summary, these were: • invasive carcinoma (any clinical T or N status, M zero); • disease encompassable in radical radiation therapy (RT) ports; • no prior surgical excision, disease not crossing the gastroesophageal junction, Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group [...]

Patients registered at the Vancouver Island Cancer Centre after undergoing esophagectomy with curative intent for invasive esophageal cancer between January 1993 and January 1998 were identified. Regional hospital records were reviewed to confirm that the referred esophagectomy patients represented 100% of treated patients. Patients treated with primary chemoradiotherapy during the same time period were also [...]

There are two potentially curative modalities for esophageal cancer. The core modality is esophagectomy for patients fit for surgery and chemoradiotherapy for those who are unsuitable for surgery. However, only about 50% of patients referred for esophageal cancer surgery have resectable disease, and the one-, two- and five-year survival rates are 56%, 34% and 11%, [...]

The general advantages of PDT for solid tumour therapy are as follow. • It has double selectivity (drug and light), while either drug or light therapy alone has no effect. • It can be given before, after or adjuvantly with other standard therapies, including surgery, radiation and chemotherapy, with no known contraindications. • There is [...]

PDT involves a combination of drugs and devices. The latter include light sources, light delivery systems and instruments for light, drug and oxygen dosimetry. With most photosensitizers, the delivered light ‘dose’ (fluence) required is substantial — typically around 100 J/cm2. This is expressed as the incident energy per unit area of tissue surface. For example, [...]

One objective for solid tumour therapy has been to increase the photosensitizer activation wavelength to increase the penetration depth of the light in tissue and, hence, the treatment depth or volume. Several absorption spectra are shown in Figure 2, while Figure 3 shows the general wavelength dependence of light penetration in tissue. For very superficial [...]