Surgery for esophageal cancer: goals of resection and optimizing outcomes.

Determining what defines an adequate esophageal resection to optimize long-term outcomes in esophageal cancer is an elusive goal. The primary reason for this ambiguousness is the almost total lack of good quality prospective randomized surgical trials that examine this question adequately. Most available data are derived from small retrospective series typically representing single institution series and their treatment biases. The intent of this article is to identify the goals of an appropriate esophagectomy for cancer, essentially defining the targets that should be achieved from an operation.