April 2002 Guideline
MEDLINE (1966 to December 2001), CANCERLIT (1983 to October 2001), and the Cochrane Library (2001, Issue 4) databases were searched with no language restrictions. "Esophageal neoplasms" (Medical subject heading [MeSH]) was combined with "chemotherapy, adjuvant" (MeSH), "radiotherapy, adjuvant" (MeSH), "immunotherapy, adjuvant" (MeSH), and each of the following phrases used as text words: "preoperative," "neoadjuvant," "chemotherapy," "radiotherapy," "radiation therapy," "irradiation," "immunotherapy," "chemoradiotherapy," "chemoradiation," and "hyperthermia." These terms were then combined with the search terms for the following study designs or publication types: practice guidelines, meta-analyses and randomized controlled trials. In addition, the Physician Data Query (PDQ) clinical trials database on the Internet
http://www.cancer.gov/search/clinical_trials/ and the conference proceedings of the 1997 to 2001 annual meetings of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) and the 1999 to 2001 annual meetings of the American Society for Therapeutic Radiology and Oncology (ASTRO) were searched for reports of new or ongoing trials. Relevant articles and abstracts were reviewed, and the reference lists from these sources were searched for additional trials. This formal search was supplemented with published abstracts from thoracic surgery and oncology conferences, conversations with colleagues and experts in the field, and a review of textbooks related to esophageal oncology.
February 2005 Update
The original literature search has been updated using the following databases: MEDLINE (1966 through January week 3, 2005), EMBASE (to week 5, 2005), and the Cochrane Library database of Systematic Reviews (2004, Issue 4). Additionally, abstracts published in the proceedings of the annual meetings of ASCO to 2004 and ASTRO to 2004 were also searched for relevant trial reports. The National Cancer Institute (NCI) (formerly the PDQ database) clinical trials database on the Internet (http://www.cancer.gov/search/clinical_trials/) was also searched for reports of ongoing trials.
Inclusion Criteria
Articles were selected for inclusion in this systematic review of the evidence if they were fully published reports or published abstracts of meta-analyses or randomized trials of neoadjuvant or adjuvant treatments compared with surgery alone or surgery plus another neoadjuvant or adjuvant treatment in patients with resectable and operable thoracic esophageal cancer. Data on survival had to be reported. Other outcomes of interest were adverse effects and quality of life.
Exclusion Criteria
Carcinomas located in the cervical esophagus were excluded.