Abstract
Radiotherapy with concurrent chemotherapy together with surgery represents the main treatment modalities in esophageal cancer. The main goal of modern radiotherapy approaches based on recent technological advances is to minimize post-treatment complications by the improvement of gross tumor volume definition (positron emission tomography-based planning), reduced interfraction motion (image-guided radiotherapy) and intrafraction motion (respiratory-gated radiotherapy) and better dose delivery to the precisely defined planning target volume (intensity-modulated radiotherapy and proton therapy).
The reduction of radiotherapy-related toxicity is fundamental to the improvement of clinical results in esophageal cancer, although the dose escalation concept is controversial.