Patterns of Recurrence After Surgery Alone Versus Preoperative Chemoradiotherapy and Surgery in the CROSS Trials

The CROSS trials randomized pts with esophageal cancer or GEJ cancer to surgery vs induction chemoradiotherapy (CRT) followed by surgery. Prior studies reported a significant improvement in survival and freedom from recurrence associated with induction therapy. In this report, CRT reduced locoregional recurrence from 34% to 14% and reduced peritoneal carcinomatosis from 14% to 4%. Local recurrence within the RT field occurred in only 5% of patients.