Esophageal Cancer : Prognostication and Individualized Treatment

Abstract

Esophageal cancer is a highly aggressive disease with a rising incidence, especially in the Western World. Survival has improved over the last decades in which multimodality treatment played an important role. Despite these improvements, esophageal cancer is still highly lethal and the efficacy of treatment varies from patient to patient. The aim of this thesis was to move another step forward in the prognosis of these patients by better understanding individual differences in survival and to move to more individualized treatment. Therefore, the studies in this thesis focused on prognostication and investigated different treatment strategies for specific patient groups.