What is the best way to treat esophageal cancer? Elizabeth Tracey reports

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Cancer of the esophagus is a tough cancer to treat, and more people worldwide are developing it. A recent study compares one regimen giving chemotherapy and radiation before surgery versus another strategy using four chemotherapy drugs plus surgery. William Nelson, director of the Kimmel Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins, says a clear winner emerged.

Nelson: Comparing chemotherapy regimen that involves 4 drugs they call FLOT, float, it's also used to treat stomach cancer, and then undergo surgery and then give it for a while afterwards. And the other was to give before give chemotherapy and radiation therapy. The drug regimen there's a little bit simpler. They had about the 220 patients in each group. The group with chemotherapy alone without radiation therapy did better overall. Survival at three years was 57 1/2 percent or so compared to 50%.       :31

Nelson notes that this improvement helps but developing even more effective treatments for esophagus cancer is needed. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.