ArticleJournal of thoracic disease2026
Long-term outcomes of patients with esophageal cancer recommended for surgery but treated non-surgically: a Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results analysis.
Article in Journal of thoracic disease, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 1 paper.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
1 citing paper in PubMed.
- Machine learning to predict distant metastasis risk and prognostic analysis in T1-2 esophageal cancer: a study based on the SEER database.Journal of thoracic disease · 2026Article
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Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Background: Esophageal cancer is a highly aggressive malignancy with a poor prognosis, particularly in regions such as Asia and Africa. Although surgery remains the standard treatment for early- to intermediate-stage esophageal cancer, a substantial proportion of patients who are recommended for surgery in real-world practice ultimately do not undergo cancer-directed resection. This study aimed to compare long-term survival outcomes between patients who were recommended for surgery but did not undergo it and those who did undergo surgery using the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) database. Methods: This retrospective cohort study utilized data from the SEER database covering the period 2004 to 2021. A total of 7,106 patients with esophageal cancer were enrolled: 5,138 in the surgical group and 1,968 in the nonsurgical group. Propensity score matching (PSM) was performed to adjust for confounding variables. Kaplan-Meier curves and Cox regression analyses were used to compare overall survival (OS) and cancer-specific survival (CSS) between the two groups. Results: After PSM, patients who underwent surgery had significantly better median OS and CSS compared with the non-surgery group, across multiple factors including age, year of diagnosis, sex, race, income, and tumor location. Notably, surgery was associated with improved survival outcomes in both male and female patients, as well as those with lower esophageal tumors and those diagnosed later in life. The surgical group consistently demonstrated a higher probability of survival, with a significant benefit in both OS and CSS (P<0.001). Conclusions: Surgery was associated with superior survival in the overall matched cohort and across most subgroups, although this benefit was not observed in selected stages such as T2 and N2 disease. These findings support the importance of surgical intervention in improving long-term survival outcomes for patients with esophageal cancer and highlight the need for better patient selection and management to reduce the number of patients who do not undergo recommended surgery.
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