Recent advances in early esophageal cancer: diagnosis and treatment based on endoscopy

ABSTRACT

Esophageal cancer (EC) often cannot be discovered in time because of its asymptomatic or symptom-atypical characteristics in early stage. The risk and probability of lymph node metastasis and distant metastasis increase correspondingly as the cancer aggressively invades deeper layers. Treatment regimens may be shifted to surgery and chemoradiotherapy (CRT) from endoscopic eradication therapy (EET) with poor quality of life and prognosis. It is imperative to identify dysplasia and EC early and enable early curative endoscopic treatments. Newer methods have been attempted in the clinical setting to achieve early detection at a more microscopic and precise level. Newer imaging techniques and artificial intelligence (AI) technology have been involved in targeted biopsies and will gradually unveil the visualization of pathology in the future. Early detection and diagnosis are the prerequisite to choose personal and precise treatment regimens. EET has also been undergoing development and improvement to benefit more patients as the first option or the firstly chosen alternative therapy, when compared with esophagectomy. More clinical studies are needed to provide more possibilities for EET.

KEYWORDS:

• Early esophageal cancer
• artificial intelligence
• endoscopic treatment
• submucosal escc

Declaration of financial/other relationships

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest. Peer reviewers on this manuscript have no relevant financial or other relationships to disclose.

Authors’ contributions

All authors participated in the work. Hang Yang contributed to the design and draft of the manuscript. And Bing Hu contributed to designing and reviewing the manuscript.

Declaration of interest

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the 1·3·5 project for disciplines of excellence Clinical Research Incubation Project, West China Hospital, Sichuan University, China (NO. 20HXFH016).