Palliative esophagectomy in unexpected metastatic disease: sense or nonsense?

Background Despite integrated positron emission tomography and computed tomography screening before and after neoadjuvant treatment in patients with locally advanced esophageal cancer, unexpected metastatic disease is still found in some patients during surgery. Should then esophagectomy be aborted or is there a place for palliative resection? Methods Between 2002 and 2015, 681 patients with potentially resectable esophageal cancer were sheduled for neoadjuvant therapy and subsequent esophagectomy. In 552 patients, a potentially curative esophagectomy was performed. In 12 patients, unexpected disease was discovered during surgery but esophagectomy was performed with synchronous resection of metastases; 10 of them had oligometastatic disease (≤4 single-organ metastases). Esophagectomy was not performed in 117 patients (because of disease progression in 50); 14 were also single-organ oligometastatic. Data of 10 single-organ oligometastatic patients who underwent esophageal resection (group 1) were compared those of 10 non-resected but treated counterparts (group 2) and with 228 patients who underwent potentially curative esophagectomy with persistent pathological lymph nodes (group 3). Results Five oligometastatic esophagectomy patients had lung metastases: 1 peritoneal, 2 adrenal, 1 pleural, and 1 pancreatic. Two oligometastatic non-resected patients had lung, 5 liver, and 3 brain metastases. Median overall survival was 21.4, 12.1, and 20.2 months in the respective groups (group 1 vs. group 2  p = 0.042; group 2 vs. group 3  p = 0.002; group 1 vs. group 3  p = 0.88). Conclusions Survival is longer in patients undergoing palliative esophagectomy with unexpected single-organ oligometastatic disease and comparable to survival in patients with persistent pathological lymph nodes. Palliative resection in these patients seems to be justified.