138 Background: Elderly patients with locally advanced esophageal cancer pose a therapeutic challenge since definitive treatment involves aggressive combined-modality therapy. Whether these individuals are offered or benefit from these approaches in the modern, trimodality era has not been widely explored. Methods: Patients ≥ 70 years old with clinical stage II and III esophageal cancer diagnosed between 1998 and 2012 were identified from the National Cancer Database and stratified based on treatment. Variables independently associated with treatment utilization were evaluated using logistic regression and mortality hazard evaluated using Cox-proportional hazards analysis. The primary aim was to compare overall survival by treatment group. The secondary aim was to identify variables associated with receiving each modality. Results: A total of 21,593 patients were identified. Median and maximum ages were 77 and 90 respectively. In 12.9%, no therapy was delivered, 24.3% received palliative therapy, 37.1% received definitive chemoradiation, 5.6% received esophagectomy alone, and 10.0% received trimodality therapy. On multivariate analysis, age ≥ 80 (OR 0.73, p < 0.001), female gender (OR 0.81, p < 0.001), and treatment at high-volume centers (OR 0.83, p = 0.008) were associated with a decreased likelihood of palliative therapy over no treatment. Age ≥ 80 (OR 0.15, p < 0.001), female gender (OR 0.80, p = 0.03), and non-Caucasian race (OR 0.63, p < 0.001) were associated with decreased trimodality use compared to definitive chemoradiation. Each treatment independently demonstrated improved survival compared to no therapy: palliative treatment (HR 0.49), concurrent chemoradiation (HR 0.36), esophagectomy (HR 0.31), trimodality therapy (HR 0.25), all p < 0.001. Conclusions: Any therapy, including palliative care, was associated with improved survival compared to no treatment in elderly patients with esophageal cancer. Subsets of patients are less likely to receive aggressive therapy based on social and institutional factors. Care should be taken to not unnecessarily deprive elderly patients of treatment that may improve survival.
Toxicity data for preoperative concurrent chemoradiotherapy with oxaliplatin and continuous infusion 5-fluorouracil for locally advanced esophageal cancer
