[Surgical strategy in multimodal treatment of gastric and esophageal cancer].

The majority of curatively treatable esophageal and gastric carcinomas are currently diagnosed in a locally advanced stage in Western Europe. The vast majority of patients in Western Europe and the USA are now treated in multimodal treatment protocols. These protocols consist of neoadjuvant chemoradiation or perioperative chemotherapy plus radical surgical resection including lymphadenectomy. Radical esophagectomy and gastrectomy are still the main curative therapeutic step in these  multimodal protocols. The current surgical recommendations and guidelines were, however, based on experience and studies from almost exclusively unimodal treatment of patient groups. The validity for the patients, particularly those who undergo multimodal treatment, therefore urgently needs to be reviewed. In particular, there are results and indirect indications from recent studies that show a difference between unimodal surgical therapy and multimodal therapy in the efficacy of radical lymphadenectomy on the oncological results. Against the background of these studies, the question arises whether it is possible to adapt surgical resection to the multimodal overall concept under the influence of the additional therapeutic modalities. Future prospective randomized surgical trials should have a tailor-made adaptation to the multimodal therapy concepts concerning primary tumor and locoregional tumor compartments. The different histological tumor entities of the upper gastrointestinal tract must also be included.